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Historic Necessity bank vault amidst the cactus

Wed, 09/30/2020 - 5:00 am

What happens to a bank vault when the walls of a bank have disintegrated over several decades to nearly a century of time, but left the sturdily intact bank vault behind amid a growth of cacti and weeds? That is what has happened to the old vault that once upon a time resided either within the General Store and then within an attached bank building or at a second bank at Necessity. During the oil boom era in Stephens County, the small town of Necessity sported two banks. As the decades went by, the building closed as did the bank and the walls around the building slipped into oblivion. The plank siding wasted away and then the block walls disintegrated, which left the sturdily built bank vault exposed to the elements of wind, rain and the blaring sun. Now what remains is the strange-looking bank vault with a huge cactus growing from within and out through all the crevices to the wind and blaring sun above.

Nothing like a ‘curiosity piece’ setting out in a pasture. After all, who has a bank vault in their field anyway? In hindsight, the vault could have been repurposed into a wine room or a keeper of a substantial collection of some type, but no, it was left to the elements. I suppose no one had a far-reaching imagination on how it could have been re-purposed to a more useful task back several decades ago. Such a waste of human resources.

For example, the Swenson Memorial Museum has two bank vaults within the museum leftover from the days when it housed the First National Bank of Breckenridge, which was the former resident of that building, built where the museum resides today. Originally, the building was specifically constructed as the home of the First National Bank of Breckenridge and built about 1920 and served as the home of FNB for about 50 years, between 1920 to 1970, when the bank moved to the Burch Hotel and that title was changed to the First National Bank building.

At that point, the Swenson Memorial Museum was organized and took up residence in the old FNB building with the teller windows serving to show-off exhibits and the bank vaults to house the research materials for those doing genealogical research on families, who had settled in Stephens County in the earliest of times.

There is a wealth of information kept in the former bank vaults of the museum and countless researchers have dug deeply into the environs of the museum files to find the minutiae of information to fit into the ancestral puzzles.

Another safe, with much less size, 36x48 resided at the Black-Robertson General Merchandise Store located at Crystal Falls back in the late 1880s through to the turn of the century-plus another decade or so. Later, when the store was closed, the Herring, Hall and Marvin safe from St. Louis, MO. was hauled to the home of T.E. Robertson. Much later, upon his death, Sally (Robertson) Satterwhite became the proud owner of the Black-Robertson safe, which now keeps important papers safely stored. I checked with Sally to make sure the historic safe held residency credentials at her home. She confirmed that the safe is in good standing and still resides at her home providing a safe place for important papers and other items that need a safe place to reside lest they be misplaced.