This month I have a really delightful story for you. A note-issuing national bank that started as a territorial and grew in a town that was bustling and vibrant, a town that then changed its name to honor a then-famous movie actor and singer, and suddenly faded into obscurity with the last remaining structure of its once proud main street collapsing into ruins. I’m talking about Berwyn, Okla., a place you have probably never heard of and probably never will again.
Berwyn, or what is left of it, is located in south central Oklahoma’s Carter County, roughly 17 miles northeast of Ardmore and 95 miles south of Oklahoma City, on State Route 53. A store opened in the 1870s, in what was then the Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory. A post office was established inside the shop in July 1883 and the location designated as Lou, named for the wife of proprietor C.C. Henderson. Four months later the place
