Wells Fargo Bank
Wells Fargo Bank
1200 W Main Street
EL CENTRO, CA 92243
Phone: 760-353-2080
Hours:
Mon-Fri 9:00 AM-6:00 PM
Sat 9:00 AM-4:00 PM
In 1852 Henry Wells and William Fargo founded Wells, Fargo & Co. to serve the West. The new company offered banking (buying gold, and selling paper bank drafts as good as gold) - and express (rapid delivery of the gold and anything else valuable).
Wells Fargo opened for business in the gold rush port of San Francisco, and soon Wells Fargo’s agents opened offices in the other new cities and mining camps of the West. In the boom and bust economy of the 1850s, Wells Fargo earned a reputation of trust by dealing rapidly and responsibly with people’s money. In the 1860s, it earned everlasting fame - and its corporate symbol - with the grand adventure of the overland stagecoach line.
Wells Fargo rushed customers’ business from the urban centers of New York and New Jersey, through the rail hub of Chicago and farming regions of the Midwest, to ranching and mining centers in Texas and Arizona, and to lumber mill towns in the Pacific Northwest. Wells Fargo agents in towns large and small offered basic financial services like money orders, travelers checks, and transfer of funds by telegraph. Always, though, wherever there was mining, from Alaska to Arizona, Wells Fargo guarded the gold.
By 1910 the Company’s network linked 6,000 locations, including new offices in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It was in these towns that the famed “Wells Fargo Wagon†delivered goods of all sorts, from a grey macinaw to some grapefruit from Tampa, as the song from the Music Man goes.
By 1918 Wells Fargo was part of 10,000 communities across the country. That year, however, the federal government took over the nation’s express network as part of its effort in the First World War. Wells Fargo was left with just one bank in San Francisco…
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