June 14, 2011: The 192X Preston school — exact year unknown because the cornerstone is cut off by the 1950 building to its right — and the capstone for Miles school.
The Easton Valley school district, the easternmost in Iowa, has been busy with construction in the past couple of years.
In the middle of the 2018-19 school year, the three-story Miles school was closed and elementary students temporarily moved to Preston, reported the Maquoketa Sentinel-Press. Based on aerial photos, only the oldest part of the complex was torn down and the rest preserved for a new school to be built in the middle.
A clip from the Preston Times website, link unavailable, says demolition of the original Preston school took place in April 2021 “after a year of no use and taking up a huge amount of space.” The site is now a parking lot for Easton Valley High School across the street.
I photographed the exteriors of both schools in both 2011 and 2018 before they slipped into history.