Completion of the Milwaukee Road brought hundreds of homesteaders to Ingomar during the 1910s, and by 1914 wood-frame homes and a small commercial district signaled a permanent settlement. On July 2, 1914, plans were announced for a bank, an important step in the community’s development. Investors H. B. Wiley, C. W. Greening, and E. B. Clark hired bookkeeper W. T. Craig, and when the new building was completed that October, it became Ingomar’s first brick building. The bank prospered at first, reorganizing and expanding in 1917 as a state bank and again in 1921 under federal charter, but economic reversal brought its sudden closure later that year. Craig was convicted of misuse of bank funds, though the ruling was later overturned on appeal. The building then stood empty as a reminder of delinquent loans and failed homesteads until the Oasis Bar opened there in 1933 and the Jersey Lilly Bar and Café moved in 1948. Since then, the former bank has served as a community gathering place, and its pressed tin ceilings, bank vaults, and traces of teller cages reflect the time when Ingomar was the commercial and social center of a vital agricultural community.