June 4, 2014: The Pilot Mound school was built in 1920. The middle window says “Garage Sale May 31, 8:00-?”.
A reorganization vote between the Grand (Boxholm/Pilot Mound) and Ogden school districts failed in November 1984. Had the vote succeeded, Grand would have been absorbed into Ogden and the name would have remained Ogden.* Instead, at the end of that school year, Grand High School graduated its last class and became a K-6 district, sending older students to Ogden. The Pilot Mound school was in use until at least that year but likely closed then. Movement was made again toward a merger in 1993-94, this time with the Ogden-Grand name, but it didn’t happen.
In 2000, Grand ended its sharing agreement with Ogden and went in with Southeast Webster instead (the switch is the reason for this open-enrollment case). That courtship was relatively fast, with reorganization five years later. The combined Southeast Webster-Grand started sharing with Prairie Valley in 2014. (The beginning of that whole-grade sharing agreement was the B-plot, if you will, of the Des Moines Register‘s “Lost Schools” series/documentary.)
*”Ogden’s Bernard Lewiston said he felt it would be expensive to change athletic uniforms, signs and other items on which Ogden is written.” Ogden Reporter, Aug. 15, 1984. Details like these matter when a community is faced with losing a school. (It’s weird that the Ogden Reporter has three random years from the 20th century archived, but I’ll take what I can get.)