I signed up for my first bank account at the old Bank of Pea Ridge about the time I was starting to college at the University of Arkansas in 1957. My folks had always done their banking at the Bank of Pea Ridge, and it seemed natural that I should have my account there. The bank in those days was located in old downtown Pea Ridge, in the small building which until recently has housed the Pea Ridge Community Library. I have noticed while visiting the library that the outline of the old bank's customer service area was still noticeable in the floor close to the door. That area by the tellers' windows was quite small. If more than three or four customers came into the bank at once, it would have been crowded. The person I remember as waiting on customers at the teller's window was Eufaula Abbot. The big round safe that now stands outside Arvest Bank always used to stand in the bank's front window downtown. I remember Mr. W.T. Patterson as the bank president, and Hugh Webb as the vice-president. I never knew who all the board members were, but I do remember that Mitchell Webb was a member of the board at one time.
I'm trying to remember if our bank accounts back then had account numbers. There may have been an account number on the statements, but I know we never paid much attention to numbers back then. The main thing to identify your check was your signature. The checks were not personalized, not pre-printed, not numbered, and the checks were free. If you needed a check, you could use one off the counter at the bank, or even borrow one from someone else. I always used a check pad that included a stub for keeping a running balance as the checks were used. I have even known of people writing a check on a scrap of paper. As long as it said somewhere on the paper "Bank of Pea Ridge," stated who to pay to, how much, and included your signature, it was likely to be good to be paid. The bank knew by our signature whose account a check should be charged to. Always, our checks were returned to us, wrapped in the bank statement. As an old-timer, it still seems strange and incomplete that today we get back a little picture of our checks with the bank statement, or we may get only a listing of the payments. Stranger yet is the technology that lets a business run our check through a little machine and then they hand the check back to us. To an old-timer it doesn't feel like a payment has been made if they give us the check back. But the money gets deducted from our account, and we suppose the business has its payment.
The old Bank of Pea Ridge originated in 1911, when several local businessmen put together $10,000 to establish a bank in town. The bank building was built later that year. At first the bank board met in the old College Hall in the schoolhouse. College Hall was an upstairs auditorium in the south section of the old 1880s college building. Mr. W.T. Patterson was not the original president, but I think he became bank president in 1912. One of the distinctions belonging to the Bank of Pea Ridge was that it was one of only two banks in Benton County that didn't fail and close during the Great Depression. The other was the Bank of Gravette.
In the 1950s, we began seeing a few things that would eventually bring big changes to Pea Ridge. First, about 1950, the roads to Rogers and Bentonville were paved. The highway to Rogers, which used to run down Ryan Road, was moved east and became what we now call South Curtis Avenue. Previously that street had ended at Patton Street and didn't exist farther south. Then some of our businesses started locating out at the Arkansas Highway 72/94 intersection: first the Drive-In Movie located where today's Arvest Bank stands, then Lasater Brothers Station where today's White Oak stands, then the Pea Ridge Mill where today's EZ Mart stands. Then in the late 1960s, the Bank itself moved to the spot where the old Aero-Dyne Drive-in Movie Theatre had been. Before we could fathom it, the center of Pea Ridge had moved a mile south, and old-downtown had become OLD DOWNTOWN.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 04/30/2014