The Ophir Creek Fairview School
After the Fairview School closed near what is now Colorado Highway 165, Clair and Ila Kae Akin Avenell remodeled the Frank Susman cabin in the Ophir Creek Mining Camp into a schoolhouse. The school cesspool was leached into an abandoned mine on the side of the hill. Twenty-five miles from the nearest stores at Rye or Wetmore, the school had no telephone, and no electricity or radio when storms tore down power lines. When the Ilse School was closed in the early 1950’s, books and other equipment were transported to the Fairview School on Ophir Creek.
The request for a teacher was answered by Gertrude Jeanette Sechrist McDaniel. “I am sure,” says Mrs. McDaniel, “that if I did not go to Fairview there would be no teacher there. It is at 9,500 feet elevation in the Wet Mountains and sometimes is inaccessible because of snow or mud. Without a teacher those mothers would have to move to town with their children. My children all are grown and it is better for me to be away from my home than those little mothers.”
“She tried living in one end of the one-room log building, but there just wasn’t enough space. The school district had no money, but Mrs. McDaniel was given the lumber by the sawmill owner (Richard Hardin) and her husband, Chester Leo McDaniel, did the carpentry. The school is 30-miles over mountain roads from the McDaniel ranch, but Mr. McDaniel made the 60-mile roundtrip daily for six weeks to provide a comfortable room for his wife. His working day was short because he had morning and evening chores at home. Mrs. McDaniel would then stay during the week and return to her home in Rye on the weekends.
The first year there were eight youngsters in the Fairview School but the term ended with three. New families arrived for the second year, some traveled as far as seven miles to reach the school. “In the early 1950's there were seven students: four in the 1st Grade (Linda Akin); two in the 2nd (Nancy Akin and Larry Brizendine) and Jeanette Brizendine in the 4th Grade.”
Shirley Akin Poole remembers being allowed to go to school with her older sisters while visiting her Aunt Ila (Avenell). When Mrs. McDaniel asked the children to stand and recite the pledge-of-alliance to the flag, three-year-old Shirley didn’t know what to do. Mrs. McDaniel yelled at her and gave her a whipping. The other children were angry and ran to Ila. She promptly yelled at Mrs. McDaniel and Shirley never returned to the school house.
A five-foot snow buried the school one spring and “completely isolated Mrs. McDaniel from the regional families. She ran out of food and fuel, but ripped opened the pupils’ bean bags, mixed the beans with snow and cooked them. First the bookcase went into the stove, and finally her desk, the one that had put runs in her hose several times.” Clair Avenell dug out a trail to the school and waded through the snow to hand water and supplies to her through a window.
One of the first days at the Fairview School, she had gone to the creek to get a pail of water when a large bobcat leaped from a tree. “As it landed at my feet,” recalls Mrs. McDaniel, “we took one startled look at each other. The cat bolted up the side of a mountain and I dashed into the school house. I’m certain I made the better time.”
“Mrs. McDaniel was awakened one night by an unusual noise, and looking through the window she peered into the eyes of a mountain lion. She barricaded the unlocked door as the lion jumped to the roof of her lean-to. The lion finally slid off the galvanized iron roof and returned to his haunts, but with a reminder for Mrs. McDaniel to keep a gun handy.”
(to be continued)
