Charles Crane/MDN From left to right, Shirley Rynstad of Gate City Bank, Minot Public Library Board President Mark Lyman, Head Librarian Zhaina Moya, Kate Cowart and Julie Erz of Gate City Bank are shown at the presentation on June 1 of the donated copy of the company's 100th Anniversary Book to the library's collection.

It’s not often that any business makes it around the sun one hundred times, which is why Gate City Bank has seen fit to chronicle a century of stories and events in a memoir titled “For a Better Way of Life.”

After first opening its doors in Fargo in 1923, the last century has seen Gate City Bank grow and expand throughout the Upper Midwest, including its second ever location here in Minot. The book represents a two-year process between the bank and Florida-based Write Stuff Enterprises, corralling and compiling dozens of interviewees and researching newspaper and university archives to piece together the story of the company, the people who worked for it and the communities they served.

On June 1, bank representatives stopped by the Minot Public Library to donate a copy of the memoir for the library’s collection. Library Board President Mark Lyman and Head Librarian Zhaina Moya were on hand to accept the book, with Lyman eagerly flipping through it for familiar names and faces from the bank’s history in the Magic City.

“It is so great to have a local business record their history and want to share that history with others and having it at a library is clearly the right place,” Lyman said, “We hope the patrons will then take their local and statewide history seriously. I’ve heard these names. I know these people, and with this information you can look back and see how did they create their business, how they grew and thrived. We need more of these stories.”