How a $250,000 bank in a small Roaring Fork Valley town became one of Colorado's largest independent banks, and the founder who never stopped giving back.

Drive through almost any town in the valley and you'll pass an Alpine Bank. It's so familiar that it's easy to forget it started here, in a single storefront in Carbondale, with one banker's conviction that a community bank should belong to its community. That banker was J. Robert "Bob" Young, and for more than half a century his story and Alpine Bank's were the same story.

A banker from Kansas

John Robert Young was born on July 11, 1938, in Kansas, one of three children of Catherine and Telford Young. He liked to recall that his parents once gave up a family vacation so they could send him to baseball camp. It was a small sacrifice, but it stuck with him, and he later pointed to it as the root of his own generosity.

Young started his career in 1961 as an assistant bank examiner with the FDIC, the federal agency that insures and supervises banks. From there he worked his way into management at several banks. He would later say he'd been banking all his life and never wanted to do anything else.

Roaring Fork Bank opens its doors

In the early 1970s, Young and a small group of friends and associates pooled $250,000 in capital to open a new bank in Carbondale. The founding directors were Bill Vollbracht, Rodney Slifer, Wally deBeque and Ernie Gianinetti, with Young as president.

Roaring Fork Bank opened on January 23, 1973. Carbondale Mayor Charles Kelly presided over the ribbon cutting, and the ribbon itself was a string of tape holding 50 silver dollars. When the ceremony was over, the money went to Mt. Sopris Park. It was a modest gift, but it set the tone for everything that followed.

From day one, Young named five core values for the bank: Independence, Community, Compassion, Integrity and Loyalty. Those same five words still appear on Alpine Bank's financial statements today.

The bank soon took the name it carries now, Alpine Bank, and the parent company became Alpine Banks of Colorado.

Growing up the valley, and beyond

Alpine's early growth followed the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys, one community at a time:

  • 1974: Snowmass Village

  • 1976: Basalt

  • 1980: Glenwood Springs and a second Snowmass Village branch

  • 1983: Eagle

  • 1989: Aspen

  • 1990: Clifton

  • 1992: Battlement Mesa and Telluride

  • 1993: Rifle, Grand Junction and a second Glenwood Springs branch

Glenwood Springs eventually became the company's headquarters, and the bank went on to open offices in Breckenridge, Dillon, Edwards, Steamboat Springs and dozens of other Western Slope and mountain towns.

In 1989 the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry named Alpine Bank its Business of the Year. In the 1990s, Young and a group of longtime colleagues formed Alpine Trust and Asset Management, known today as Alpine Bank Wealth Management.

Owned by the people who work there

The decision that may have shaped Alpine Bank most came in 1983, when Young introduced an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The idea was simple: if employees owned a real share of the bank, they would have a real stake in its future, and the bank would be far harder for an outside buyer to swallow.

It worked. The bank has historically contributed seven percent of each employee's salary to the ESOP, and employees, directors and their families together hold a majority of the company. As big national banks bought up community banks across Colorado over the following decades, Alpine stayed independent.

Young treated his staff like family, and the loyalty ran both ways. By 2011, about 70 percent of Alpine's employees had been with the bank for five years or more.

"It is the bottom line"

If there's one thing valley residents associate with Alpine Bank besides banking, it's giving. Young admitted that he first adopted a give-back policy because he thought it would be good for business. Over time his view changed: charity, he said, "isn't good for the bottom line, it is the bottom line."

The bank's support has reached community events, the arts, animal shelters, recreation and, above all, education and childcare. In 2017 alone, Alpine donated more than $3.7 million to community organizations and paid employees for nearly 14,000 hours of volunteer work. Since 1983 it has published Community News, a twice-yearly roundup of local nonprofits and partnerships.

Young's personal giving was just as notable. He donated millions of dollars to charities, with Colorado Mountain College a major beneficiary, and established more than 300 scholarships. The Alpine Bank First-Generation Scholarship, which has helped more than 300 Colorado students become the first in their families to attend college, was among the achievements his family said he was proudest of.

The honours piled up:

  • Colorado's Outstanding Philanthropist (1995)

  • Western Colorado Philanthropist of the Year, Community Resource Center (1997)

  • Citizen of the Year, Glenwood Springs Chamber of Commerce (1999)

  • Athena Award, Glenwood Springs Chamber Resort Association (2006)

  • Council for Resource Development award for his support of community colleges (2008)

  • Colorado Business Hall of Fame (2011)

  • Garfield County Fair & Rodeo Hall of Fame (2023)

He also served as president of the Colorado Bankers Association, sat on the Colorado State Banking Board, and founded Independent Bankers of Colorado.

A banker with a need for speed

Young had a lifelong love of cars and began amateur racing in 1969. The passion found its way into the bank too: former professional racecar driver Wally Dallenbach Sr. served on Alpine's board, and staff once built a pig-shaped replica of Young's race car for the Alpine Bank Racing Team.

Crossing the Divide

After four decades on the Western Slope and in the mountains, Alpine Bank expanded to the Front Range in 2014, with branches in Denver's Cherry Creek and Union Station. Boulder and the Denver Tech Center followed in 2018, and Fort Collins and downtown Colorado Springs in 2022.

The bank also opened its ownership to the wider public. Its Class B shares began trading in March 2019 and moved to the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol ALPIB in September 2020. The goal, the bank said, was to let community members become owners alongside employees.

Fifty years young

Alpine Bank marked its 50th anniversary in 2023 with 890 employees and about 170,000 customers. The celebration looked a lot like the opening day ribbon: on Colorado Day, the bank gave $426,500 to more than 350 Colorado organizations chosen by its employees, and in Carbondale, where it all began, Young and the local branch gave $10,000 each to five Roaring Fork Valley nonprofits. Governor Jared Polis proclaimed August 1, 2023, "Alpine Bank Day."

Passing the torch

Bob Young died peacefully in Florida on December 11, 2025, at the age of 87, surrounded by loved ones. He had served as the bank's chairman for 53 years.

At his death, the bank he started in one Carbondale office had grown to 39 locations and $6.8 billion in assets. Days later, the board named Glen Jammaron, a Colorado native who joined Alpine in 1985 and had served as president since 2007, as CEO and chairman. Remembering Young, Jammaron said simply, "Bob believed in people."

Young's daughter, Margo Young-Gardey, who sits on the bank's board, described his death as a passing of the torch. Thanks to the employee ownership Young put in place more than 40 years earlier, that torch stays in local hands.

For those of us in the valley, Alpine Bank's history is local history: a bank founded in Carbondale, headquartered in Glenwood Springs, and built on the idea that its success should be measured by the communities around it.