Celebrating 75 years in the banking business in Teton County, and the grand opening of the newest banking facility in Montana, Citizens State Bank of Choteau will throw open the doors to their new building across the street from the old building, at 9 o’clock Friday morning, Oct. 26, 1964, and the staff and management welcomes the public to stop in and help them open the new bank in typical Montana fashion.
The Citizens State Bank holds a long tradition in the history of banking in Choteau, as the 75th anniversary of the founding of the bank is also being celebrated along with the grand opening of the new building. The first bank to appear in Choteau was chartered in December of 1892 with only $25,000 in capital. Named the Bank of Choteau, it was dissolved in 1917.
The Citizens State Bank was chartered on March 4, 1909 with its first deposits being taken on March 21. The president was James Eckford, and records indicate only that it was located in a “frame building on upper main street.”
In 1915 the bank moved into the Larson Building (Choteau Drug occupies that space at present).
About the same time the Citizens State Bank was getting on its feet, the Stockman’s State Bank was chartered in 1919 by Fred Woehrner, a Great Falls druggist, with C.S. McDonald as president. That bank was located on the corner of Second Street and Main Ave. No., the present site of Citizens State Bank.
On July 9, 1927, the Citizens State Bank assumed the assets of the Stockman's Bank. At that time Woehrner hired Fred Barribal of the Conrad National Bank in Great Fails, and Denzel McDonald of the Stockman's Bank to run the Citizens State Bank.
Hirshberg’s bank, the First National Bank, closed its doors to business on July 16, 1934. By 1936, Fred Barribal and Denzel McDonald were in a position to purchase tbe Citizens State Bank from Woehrner, and Barribal became president. In the meantime, the facility which had housed the Stockman's State Bank had been standing idle since 1927.
The move from the Larson Building to the present location was made in 1938.
From the Choteau Acantha