First National Bank taps vault of stories to share inside looks at nearly 140-year history

This paid piece is sponsored by The First National Bank in Sioux Falls.

In 1976, a construction crew stood, hands on hips and squinting into the sun, wondering how on earth they were going to lower the 10,000-pound limestone eagle to the ground.

The regal statue had been perched above Phillips Avenue in downtown Sioux Falls since before the street was paved.

With a little strategy and a big crane, the eagle eventually would land just a few feet away on the corner of Ninth and Phillips, where it still sits today.

Now, when you walk by, it’s as if it was always there. For us at The First National Bank in Sioux Falls, we feel the same way each time we walk through our office doors.

We have been here for more than 135 years, and much like the eagle watching people pass by, we have watched the city grow up around us.

This is our story, more than 135 years in the making.

It’s also the story of Sioux Falls. The first homesteaders staked their claims here in 1856, just ahead of the Civil War. It stayed a pioneer town for decades.

When we opened our doors in 1885 as Minnehaha National Bank, the city was just a few thousand people living on the frontier. Today, Sioux Falls proper is home to over 200,000 people.

The bank’s original location in 1885 was a small, rented room in a building on the southwest corner of Ninth Street and Main Avenue.

We feel a special kinship to this city because in many ways we’ve grown up together.

Just as families have family trees, a select few businesses have these, too, with generations of leaders guiding organizations for a century or more.

After more than 135 years as a financial institution, we are still family-owned and independently operated.

And we are honored to be part of a family business that has endured into our fifth generation.

Today, less than 3 percent of family businesses survive into the fourth generation, making surviving to the fifth so rare it is a true statistical anomaly. Even more than statistics, though: Our team acts as a family itself.

It’s easy to pay lip service to the idea of a business as a family.

We’ve worked diligently to keep family dynamics alive. Make no mistake, performance pays the bills — but culture sustains the legacy.

We hold ourselves to a high standard of performance, but before everything else, our culture puts family first.

In our new blog series, Becoming FIRST, we will share the surprising history of a bank older than the state it’s in.

Of people who’ve lived and led through the most harrowing times in our nation’s history. Of how we got Dolly Parton to play an amazing show and share books with hundreds of thousands of kids across South Dakota.

You’ll experience firsthand why we are a bank that donates substantially to local causes each year and how we build successful relationships — every single day, it’s what we do at First National Bank.

To learn more about the series, you can explore the archives for yourself right here or by using the links below. Welcome to the remarkable story of The First National Bank in Sioux Falls.

Explore the series

• The Reputation Chapter
• The Dolly Chapter
• The Business Chapter
• The Crisis Chapter
• The Advantage Chapter
• The Values Chapter