The Biggest Bank To Be Is Currently In A Ghost Town
This is the strangest banking story you’ve ever heard, and it’s going to have repercussions worldwide. The story starts over a hundred years ago.
In 1879, $30M in bearer bonds destined for west coast banks financing parts of the transcontinental railway were temporarily stored at the Mono County Bank in Bodie, CA. A well-armed wagon train had been bringing these bonds west, but a snow storm in the mountains further west made it impossible to go farther.
Mono County wasn’t just any bank. Having the strongest safe within 500 miles, it was a safe harbor facility. The wagon train was staffed by east coasters a long way from home and with the bonds safe in Bodie, they turned around. The west coast had been alerted but the passes were closed for some time. The bonds stayed safe where they lay. Except that for some reason everyone forgot they were there and many years later, Bodie became a ghost town.
Historians recently decided to give the Mono Country bank building another look and in doing so, made the biggest discovery of the financial century. According to the lead researcher, Cal State Northridge professor Param Var, “From the outline, we realized that fallen bricks were covering something that turned out to be a safe in remarkably good condition. A locksmith from Mammoth Lakes drove in to open it and oh, my lord.” The bonds, which had been worth $30M in 1879, are currently valued at $1.2 trillion. It turns out that the Mono County Bank’s registration had for the last 150 years simply been suspended, and the bonds now belong to the bank due to the law of surrendered funds.
Mono County Bank is now being reactivated on the strength of those newly found bonds and with these holdings, will now be the largest bank in the United States. One of its new corporate officers, Hou die Geld, recently joked that maybe the bank’s HQ should be the first new building in Bodie, CA since it was abandoned in 1942. Regardless, as you can guess, this is going to be an amazing ride.
More about Bodie here: https://lnkd.in/egHSQmdV
