First National Bank
a.k.a. The 100th Meridan Museum
101 S. Main St., Erick, OKIn appearance and function the First National Bank Building of Erick is not unlike countless other small town bank buildings erected around the turn of the century. The Citizens Bank opened on the site in 1902 - a year after Erick itself was established - in a frame building. It became a "National" bank in 1905 and two years later the building being nominated was erected - a solid, two-story brick structure, one of the first completed in Erick. And until 1968, when it was abandoned in favor of a new facility at the other end of the block, it was the hub of the community.
Banking occupied the front 60 feet of the first floor, But a barber shop occupied the back 20 feet. (For a time there was also a four-chair barber shop in the basement!) The upstairs, again following a familiar small-town pattern, accommodated the area's leading business and professional people ... at least four attorneys over the years, three insurance agents, a dentist, two doctors. Even the judicial arm of local government occasionally used the bank building. At various times one Justice of the Peace maintained an office on the second floor, another held court in the basement.
The building thus served the town and community significantly in a number of different ways. And today, appearing much as it always has, it is serving in yet another way. As the 100th Meridian Museum it will not only preserve and display the area's heritage and artifacts, but dramatize an interesting aspect of its history as well. The 100th Meridian north of Red River to the 37th parallel was set by treaty as the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase (1803). But the various surveys trying to determine the meridian varied almost as much as a degree (56 miles at Erick). The McClellan Survey of 1852-1853 actually placed this entire area in Texas. But the Gennett Survey of 1927-1929 finally determined the present Oklahoma-Texas boundary. And, appropriately enough, an official bench mark used in that survey is embedded in the east foundation wall of the bank (now museum) building.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.