{"id":2134,"date":"2021-02-10T21:31:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T21:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstamericanbanknm.com\/wph\/workarea\/?page_id=2134"},"modified":"2025-06-30T21:44:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T21:44:29","slug":"our-banking-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.firstamericanbanknm.com\/wph\/workarea\/our-community\/about-our-community\/our-banking-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Our History"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Our History<\/h2>    <p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">First American Bank, formerly <em>The First Natio<span style=\"color: #000000;\">nal<\/span> Bank of Artesia<\/em> has a long and rich history as an independent community bank. The following information was found in a file in our vault and was most likely compiled by a board secretary detailing the earliest years of the bank&#8217;s history.<\/span><\/p> <blockquote> <p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>&#8220;The First National Bank of Artesia is older than the city itself, having been issued its charter on November 24, 1903. At that time New Mexico was still a territory; becoming a State in 1912. The population at that time was about 1,000 persons.<\/em><\/span><\/p> <p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>No buildings were available when the bank received its charter, and the bank was unable to open for business until the following year. The <\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>construction at 305 W. Main Street &#8211; the first brick building to be to be built in Artesia &#8211; <\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>started on October 24, 1903, when the first load of building stone arrived from a quarry near Roswell. <\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>The First National Bank officially opened its doors to the community on February 2, 1904.<\/em><\/span><\/p> <p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>The capital of the newly formed bank was $25,000, consisting of 250 shares worth $100 each. Almost half of the stock was subscribed by Artesia interests. <\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>At the close of business on the first day deposits totaled $6,127.59.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p> <p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>In 1931 The First National Bank and the old Citizen\u2019s State Bank, which was chartered in 1919, merged to form one banking institution. The consolidated bank retained the name of The First National Bank but moved to the location of the Citizen\u2019s State Bank which was then located in the building at 301 W. Main Street.<\/em><\/span><\/p> <p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><em>The First National Bank was an integral part of Artesia and its citizens. Over the next 50 years deposits grew from $96,492.69 on January 11, 1905, to $10,545,981.08 on June 30, 1955.&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p> <\/blockquote> <p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">To keep up with the growing community in which we were founded, we introduced motor banking in 1959, began offering Trust Services in 1963 and in 1981 the bank underwent a major remodel, and a second story was added!<\/span><\/p> <p>On February 25, 1994, the headline of the <em>Artesia Daily Pres<\/em>s stated a man robbed First National Bank. Luckily, he turned himself in three days later. Around that time, the bank made headlines again in the local paper by, &#8220;offering a new payment alternative,&#8221; their first Automatic Teller Machine (ATM).<\/p> <p>The First National Bank of Artesia had valuable experience and expertise in oil and gas, so to better serve our customers outside of Artesia in 1996 we opened our second location in Hobbs, New Mexico. The success of the Hobbs market was the beginning of our state-wide expansion.<\/p> <p>When we celebrated our 100-year anniversary we had opened branches in Roswell and Las Cruces. By 2008, we had local branches in the communities of Alamogordo, Lovington, a second location in Rowell and a state-of- the-art Data Center to accommodate our customers&#8217; need for advanced growing technology.<\/p> <p>In 2009, although our name, The First National Bank of Artesia served us well for over 106 years, it did not reflect our expansion into other communities and our commitment to each local economy. We knew our customers throughout New Mexico deserved the value and service that we, as a premier independent community bank, could only provide. In January of that year, we changed our name to First American Bank.\u00a0<\/p> <p>Over the next decade we reached one billion dollars and are now near two billion. We have twenty-two locations in fourteen communities in two states &#8211; New Mexico and Texas and we are continuing to grow by offering new products, services, technology and fraud protection all while honoring our humble beginnings as one of the first banks in the state of New Mexico.<\/p> <p>We celebrated our 122nd anniversary in 2025, a milestone few other companies in our country will reach. We thank you for your loyalty, dedication and commitment from our employees, board of directors, shareholders and mostly our customers who have traveled on journey with us.<\/p>    <div class=\"wp-block-ncr-blocks-button button button-align-none\"><a class=\"ncr-btn btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.firstamericanbanknm.com\/wph\/workarea\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=324&amp;action=edit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Our history timeline<\/a><\/div>    <p><\/p>    <div class=\"wp-block-ncr-blocks-button button button-align-none\"><a class=\"ncr-btn btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.firstamericanbanknm.com\/wph\/workarea\/contact-us\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Contact Us<\/a><\/div>    <p>To learn more about building a relationship with First American Bank.<\/p>    <div class=\"wp-block-ncr-blocks-image-credit imageCredit-wrapper band band-image-credits is-style-default\"><div class=\"band-cta\"><p class=\"output-field1\">The First National Bank Archive Photos<br\/>Artesia, NM<\/p><p class=\"output-field2\"><\/p><\/div><\/div>    <p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our History First American Bank, formerly The First National Bank of Artesia has a long and rich history as an independent community bank. The following information was found in a file in our vault and was most likely compiled by a board secretary detailing the earliest years of the bank&#8217;s history. &#8220;The First National Bank [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1097,"parent":43,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2134","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Our History - First American Bank<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First American Bank has a rich banking history in New Mexico. 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