The Second Bank of Montpelier

This brick building went up in the early nineteen hundreds to house the Second Bank of Montpelier. Montpelier already had a reputation for trouble at the teller window. Years earlier, in eighteen ninety-six, Butch Cassidy and his gang had robbed the town's first bank and ridden off with thousands of dollars.

So when two men came for this bank, years later, the place was watching. As the story goes, the robbers tried to blow the vault with dynamite, but in the dark they knocked a loaded pistol off the top of the vault. It hit the floor and fired.

The noise spooked them, and they bolted straight into the arms of the night police officer. The bank itself survived the holdup but not the nineteen twenties. Hard times eventually forced it to close, and another banking firm took over the building.