Citizens Tri-County Bank ­­— 50 years of community banking

BY DAVE FLESSNER 

Fifty years ago, a half dozen Sequatchie County business owners decided to try to organize another local bank to Dunlap to compete against the only other local bank, Sequatchie County Bank, later renamed to Mountain Valley Bank. 

“We wanted to have a competitive market and as we began to organize the bank we found a lot of others did too,” recalled Glenn Barker, a retired dairy farmer who helped organize the bank with his brother Flavius and four other local business owners.

Ultimately, nearly 400 local investors raised the $500,000 needed to capitalize the new bank, originally known as Citizens Bank of Dunlap.

Over the past half century through a half dozen bank acquisitions and the purchase of several other bank offices in other cities, Citizens Bank revamped its name a couple of times and has grown into a $1.2 billion-asset bank with 25 offices spread across nine counties of Tennessee. Citizens Tri-County Bank, which has been the institution’s name since 1992, is now the 18th biggest bank headquartered in Tennessee and one of the biggest located outside one of the state’s biggest cities.

For more see the October 6 issue of The Dunlap Tribune.