Downtown Chehalis Bank Wells Fargo to Close

This Summer: Bank’s Roots Trace Back to 1884

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The Chehalis branch of the Wells Fargo bank on Market Boulevard will be closing this summer and consolidating with the Centralia branch on Harrison Avenue. The building has been home to a banking institution for over 130 years, according to Steve Richert who often posts Chehalis history to a community Facebook page.

Kyle Brubach, the lead teller at the Chehalis Wells Fargo, said that the bank will be closing in June and the company is looking to sell the building. An ATM will remain open at the location after the closure but it is unknown how long the ATM will remain in Chehalis.

Richert said that customers of the Chehalis Wells Fargo received a letter last week giving notice of the bank’s permanent closure set for June 2, 2021.

Chehalis Mayor Pro-tem Daryl Lund said he was sad to see the downtown bank close.



“I think it’s terrible because I banked there as a wee little lad and my folks banked there for years. A bank brings people downtown,” Lund said. “We’re lucky we have Security State Bank because they’re locally owned.”

Richert pulled information on Wells Fargo’s history in Chehalis from various sources including a 1929 Chehalis Bee-Nugget article marking the bank’s 45-year anniversary in the area. Prior to Wells Fargo moving into the 473 N Market Boulevard location, the building was home to National Bank of Washington.

“The Wells Fargo company began in 1870.  Fourteen years later in 1884, two men who had recently moved to Chehalis for a business opportunity, opened a very small bank at the corner of North and Front Street — now Railroad Avenue — adjacent to the railroad tracks running through the new town. That bank, over many decades, evolved into the Coffman-Dobson Branch of Wells Fargo,” Richert posted to a Facebook page titled “You might be from Chehalis if…”

Burbach said that the Chehalis branch is no longer the Coffman-Dobson branch and it is just Wells Fargo in Chehalis.