In 1978, as enrollment in the South Page school district was falling*, the district closed its attendance centers in both Braddyville and Coin. It was a far cry from the optimism of just over a decade earlier, when voters approved a bond issue for construction at all sites including the high school in College Springs. The district sold the buildings that summer.
On March 29, 1979, a F4 tornado plowed through Braddyville, and the former school was among the total devastation in the tiny community at the Missouri state line.
This sentence from the April 2, 1979, Clarinda Herald-Journal is pure in its Iowa-ness: “South Page juniors and seniors were supposed to go to Braddyville this Monday to help with the cleanup, but all activities were cancelled due to the snow Sunday.”
That’s right — 65 hours after a tornado struck Page County, the area got four inches of snow.
I have pushed the school district timeline back a few years, now to 1977-78, to get these closures in and also Center Junction, following an earlier post on Midland.
(Information from Clarinda Herald-Journal archives.)
*It’s still falling. 🙁