The small community of SecondMace/Fairview/Forest dale obviously believed in educating their children as three schools were built for that purpose.
The Clarkson School
Community members created a petition in 1882 that listed the names of ten school age children. The petition asked Mr. F.G. Hogan, Custer County Superintendent of Schools to form new district boundaries for the schooling of Fairview students. The Superintendent wrote back that they should proceed to create District 6. James H. Clarkson donated land for the new District 6 to build a schoolhouse on. The schoolhouse was built near the present location of the Baver- Li-Lodge.
The building also served as a church, dance hall, and meeting house for the scattered community of almost 500 people. Classes could only be held in the summer as the winters were too harsh, and the snow too deep for the students to travel from the furthest parts of the spread-out community. It was also costly to heat the building. School terms ran from 60 days to 4 months.
The Fairview School
About ten years later, Joseph Bigelow and Thomas McConnell built a new school with seats, desks and blackboards. The building sat just to the northwest of the hairpin turn on what today is Highway 165 at the juncture with County Road 400, about 200 yards northeast of where Ophir and Middle Creeks merge.
Mr. Kent was the first teacher; others were Anna Burns, Hattie Bolinger, Ernestine Anna Allen Baker, Martha Warner and Bonnie Doria Rowe. The 1919 – 1920 school year District 6 directors were Glen Bigelow, Hazel Riggin and Mr. E.A. Harper. Many of the rural schools of Custer County were consolidated by 1922 with most children bussed to the new District C-1 in Westcliffe. The buses would not go as far as Fairview, so the Fairview School remained open.
In 1924, Martha M. Warner was the teacher when classes started in April. The oldest Briar children: George, Clara Eleanor and Ralph were three of the six that attended school in Fairview that year from April to October. Eleanor Briar and Ruth Moses were in the 3rd Grade together; Ray and Emma Miller came from Ophir Creek where their father farmed and had a saw mill.
Bonnie Doria Rowe remembered her time at the Fairview School about 1930, “I taught approximately two dozen children, ranging in all ages. School was in session from February through October and vacation months were November through January. She arrived at the school an hour early to prepare for the day. She had to prepare lessons, chop wood to heat the school and also clean it. Class was in session from 9am to 3pm five days a week and most of the children came from the many mining and lumber camps in the area.”
The children from Ophir walked to this school along Ophir Creek. The Whitmire Ranch was on the westside of Bigelow Pass, up along the divide. The Whitmire children walked to the Fairview school from their home down the other side of the mountain.
There was, the year she taught, a saw mill operated by a black family. Six children from this sawmill camp attended the school. She recalled, “Carl Little was on the school board and her pay, for her tenure, was $65 a month.”
Bonnie met her husband, Malcolm Barneycastle, while standing in the school yard one day as he drove by with a load of mining timbers, which he hauled to Florence. She waved and they soon became friends. They were married in Walsenburg. She was 18-years-old at the time.
(to be continued)
