The Bank of Boulder was incorporated on April 18, 1894 in Boulder, Montana. It was founded by F.C. Berendes, Jesse Patterson, A. Belcher, and Ed Tyan, each of whom purchased three hundred shares of stock at one hundred dollars per share. Within a few days of its organization, the Bank of Boulder absorbed the First National Bank of Boulder. During the next thirty-nine years the Bank of Boulder engaged in financial transactions with the Daly Bank and Trust and the State Savings Bank of Butte; the American Bank, the Conrad Trust and Savings, and the Union Bank and Trust of Helena; the Whitehall State Bank of Whitehall; the Continental National Bank of Chicago; and the Bankers Trust of New York. During the early years of the Great Depression the assets of the Bank of Boulder fell as bond values, collateral, and deposits declined. By 1932 the bank operated with a two million dollars deficit. On Wednesday, March 11, 1933, after nearly forty years of business, the Bank of Boulder closed. The board of directors, in response to the bank's untenable financial position, turned the bank's affairs over to the Montana Superintendent of Banks for liquidation. H.H. Cloy was appointed by the state to take charge of the bank and H.R. Houghton was appointed liquidating agent. On April 29, 1933, the bank's depositors received fifty percent of their proven deposits.