Local hometown communities are near to our heart because our founder was born and raised in a community that valued their local hometown businesses and people. David Lloyd Evans (D.L.) was born in 1854 in Brigham City, Utah, and was taught by his widowed pioneer mother, Winnefred (Gwen) Lloyd Roberts Evans, about the importance of industry and hard work. His first job was herding the neighbor's dairy cows on the rugged Utah mountainsides every day. In 1871 he moved with his mother and two younger brothers to the Malad Valley in Idaho, where they homesteaded a 160-acre farm, breaking out the sagebrush by hand with grubbing hoes and then planting crops. Through the encouragement of their mother, D. L. and his younger brother, L. L., attended the local pioneer schools and were fine students. Eventually, both qualified to attend the University of Deseret in Salt Lake City, Utah, and earned their teaching certificates in two years. The brothers then returned to Idaho, where they taught at Malad, Samaria, and Weston village schools for several years.
Being bright, energetic, and possessing the pioneer entrepreneurial spirit, the brothers formed a close family partnership that over the years led to the development of two Evans Cooperative Mercantile Stores (one in Malad City and the other in American Falls), several ranches and farms, and investments in thirteen pioneer Idaho and Utah banks. D.L. Evans Bank started as a small business and was capitalized with just $25,000 by a pioneering group of southern Idaho businessmen on September 15, 1904, in Albion, Idaho. Located in a one-story frame building, it was Cassia County's first bank, and while serving as a State Senator, D. L. Evans called the Banks first stockholders meeting to order.
Both brothers were public-spirited and served in numerous local public leadership positions, including the Idaho Legislature during its early statehood years. D. L. was first elected to the Idaho Territorial Legislature in 1882 at 28 years of age and became the Speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives in 1899. The brothers sense of service lives on in one of the Banks core values, Commitment to Community.
