The Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. Way back in 1907, in a little frame house on Third Street, the oldest Hidalgo County bank still in operation first opened its doors. Now, a frame house might not sound like much of a foundation for a financial institution, but the people behind it were something else entirely.

The incorporators of the firm were area leaders, and that word, leaders, is doing real work here. You had J. M.

Johnson, Sr., who stepped up as the first president, and his son J. M. Johnson, Jr., right there alongside him.

Then there was William M. Price and S. P.

Silver, all of them out of Mercedes. And reaching a little further across the county, John Closner came in from Hidalgo, and Walter A. McNeil rode in from Santa Maria.

Six men, one frame house, one bank. The institution they built together was called the Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company, and that name carried weight. Now, if you know anything about Texas in the twentieth century, you know what was coming down the road.

The economic depression of the 1930s. That was the kind of storm that swallowed banks whole, banks with marble columns and brass fixtures and long histories. But this one, the one that started in a frame house on Third Street, survived.

Sound leadership, the marker says. That's a quiet way of saying that the right people made the right calls when everything was on the line. And they came out the other side to become a leader in the development of the Rio Grande Valley area.

From a frame house in 1907, to a Valley institution. That little bank on Third Street had something to prove, and it went right ahead and proved it.

What the marker says

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)