(Hey, that’s cheating! — Ed.)
May 22, 2014: Five weeks after this picture was taken, the school building used in Exira for most of the 20th century was destroyed in a controlled burn.
There is an easy way to tell if a core school building was built before about, say, the Great Depression and if it was built later without looking at a single picture of the building. Find it on a map. Many old schools are in the middle of town, built on land that may have been set aside for a school all the way back when the town was originally platted, to make it easy to walk there and to be a point of pride.
As the land area covered by a single school increased, and the school itself needed to expand, the district would have no choice but to build new on the edge of town. Thus, today’s Exira-Elk Horn-Kimballton High School is on the south side of Exira.
Exira High School’s last hurrah before joining EHK: A 2010 state champion team featuring future ISU and two-time All-Big 12 player Hallie Christofferson.
(The exception to this location postulate, of course, is when the town/village wasn’t big enough to have a “middle”, and then it’s on the edge of town on the main road. For example, Yarmouth.)