The Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company

Mercedes was a company town before it was a city. Land promoter Lon C. Hill laid it out in 1904, and the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company renamed it, set minimum building costs on Main Street and banned alcohol sales for fifteen years. In April 1918 the city council made it illegal to speak German or another enemy language in any school, and to advertise or preach in German. The town changed names several times before settling on Mercedes, and why it chose that name is still disputed.

What the plaque says

The Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company The oldest Hidalgo County bank still in operation, this institution opened in 1907 in a frame house on Third Street. Incorporators of the firm were area leaders J. M. Johnson, Sr., who served as the first president, his son J. M. Johnson, Jr., William M. Price and S. P. Silver, all of Mercedes; John Closner of Hidalgo; and Walter A. McNeil of Santa Maria. Sound leadership helped the Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company survive the economic depression of the 1930s and to become a leader in the development of the Rio Grande Valley area. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 19 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• La Lomita Chapel — 26 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 29 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.

More markers nearby

• Mercedes Enterprise — steps away
• The American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation System — steps away
• Dr. Hector P. García — steps away
• Temple Beth Israel — 0.5 mi