{"id":13265,"date":"2021-09-17T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-09-17T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=13265"},"modified":"2025-05-12T23:23:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T04:23:22","slug":"school-timeline-mega-update-1968-70-plus-compilations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2021\/09\/school-timeline-mega-update-1968-70-plus-compilations\/","title":{"rendered":"School timeline mega-update: 1968-70, plus compilations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13327\" src=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/sharpsburggym.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/sharpsburggym.jpg 500w, https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/sharpsburggym-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\n<em><strong>August 16, 2016:<\/strong> &#8220;There will be an informal opening of the new gymnasium at the Sharpsburg school on Saturday evening, October 10, at 8:00 o&#8217;clock [sic]. A snappy program is planned, followed by a lunch consisting of sandwiches, pie, pickles and coffee.&#8221; \u2014 <\/em>Lenox Time Table<em>, October 8, 1936<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The exodus of high school graduates from the county has become so universal that Mount Ayr high school seniors were given a special guest lecture this year on urban living.&#8221; \u2014 <\/em>Des Moines Register<em>, May 24, 1970<\/em><\/p>\n<p><del>Everything<\/del> Many things you wanted to know about the United and Mount Ayr community school districts, but didn&#8217;t know how to ask:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It took the United Community School District, between Ames and Boone, TEN bond issue votes before finally getting a centralized building in January 1968 (<em>Ames Daily Tribune<\/em>, 12\/15\/64).\n<ul>\n<li>United started as a merger between Jordan and Napier (<em>ADT<\/em>, 4\/16\/55) and added Luther in 1957 (<em>ADT<\/em>, 5\/1\/57).<\/li>\n<li>I believe the Luther school closed at the end of the 1967-68 school year, and students moved to Jordan. It was gone by fall 1969 for sure (<em>ADT<\/em>, 9\/5\/69).<\/li>\n<li>In between approving a bond issue for a new high school and it actually opening, voters scuttled a tripleheader East Boone merger with Boone and Madrid (<em>ADT<\/em>, 4\/6\/66).<\/li>\n<li>Then another bond issue for an elementary addition (<em>ADT<\/em>, 11\/16\/71) replaced Jordan and Napier by fall 1973 (<em>ADT<\/em>, 10\/12\/73) &#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230; three years before everything in Jordan was wiped off the face of the earth by a tornado a mile wide, one of two F5s in Iowa in the Fujita scale era and notorious for being <a href=\"https:\/\/iowawx.com\/2012\/06\/13\/jordan-f5-tornado-of-1976\">caught on film spinning counterclockwise<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Nichols, like Atkins, existed independently after mid-1966 because of litigation. A &#8220;long series of legal actions related to an attempt to reorganize the Nichols District&#8221; (<em>Lone Tree Reporter,<\/em> 1\/11\/68) meant that the school remained independent for two extra years. Lone Tree&#8217;s attempt to get at least part of the district failed and Nichols went to West Liberty (<em>LTR<\/em>, 8\/29\/68).<\/li>\n<li>Sharpsburg&#8217;s school closed on February 2, 1968 (<em>Lenox Time Table<\/em>, 2\/1\/68). It followed a dizzying array of bond issue votes, including multiple ones between December 1962 and November 1963, that eventually led to a new high school building in Lenox and all elementary grades moving to the old school there.\n<ul>\n<li>Two rural school buildings \u2014 Grant No. 4 in Adams County and Grant No. 3 in Taylor County \u2014 were brought in and placed right next to the Sharpsburg gym in 1965 so Lenox could stop renting space in the American Legion building. &#8220;The board emphasized that this was a temporary measure.&#8221; (<em>LTT<\/em>, 7\/8\/65) They remain there to this day and can be seen from old IA 49.<\/li>\n<li>Yes, Adams and Taylor County both have Grant Townships, separated only by Platte Township in the northeast corner of Taylor County.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Schools in Joice, Hayfield, and Leland all closed in 1968 (<em>Forest City Summit<\/em>, 5\/2\/68 and 5\/16\/68). Leland was torn down the following spring (<em>FCS<\/em>, 3\/27\/69, and personal visit to site)\n<ul>\n<li>Leland&#8217;s gym was 18 years old (<em>FCS<\/em>, 3\/27\/69). Hayfield&#8217;s elementary addition was 16 years old (<em>FCS<\/em>, 4\/5\/51). Joice&#8217;s elementary addition was 9 years old (<em>FCS<\/em>, 3\/19\/59).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Beaver&#8217;s school closed at Christmas break in 1968, two years after being assigned to Ogden (<em>The Globe-Free Press and Paton Portrait and Rippey News<\/em>, 1\/9\/69)<\/li>\n<li>Morley&#8217;s school closed in 1968 (<em>Anamosa Journal<\/em>, 2\/26\/68)\n<ul>\n<li>Its second-to-last news item was about a boy injured by flying glass during a storm on the same day as the Charles City tornado (<em>AJ<\/em>, 5\/20\/68). Its last news item was the city of Morley taking it over and demolishing the main building to leave the gym as a community center (<em>Anamosa Eureka<\/em>, 6\/18\/70).<\/li>\n<li>The Martelle, Morley, and Viola districts were all cut up in 1961-62, with Anamosa getting the towns and other districts getting land.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Rhodes&#8217; school closed in 1969 (<em>State Center Enterprise<\/em>, 4\/24\/69). The West Marshall board voted and rescinded the move in the same meeting a year earlier (<em>SCE<\/em>, 3\/14\/68). Finding this took a little extra work as the <em>SCE&#8217;s<\/em> images for 1969 are so illegible only headlines get picked up by the digital reader.<\/li>\n<li>Grant&#8217;s school closed over Christmas break in 1969-70 as students moved to a new building in Griswold (<em>Griswold American<\/em>, 1\/7\/70).<\/li>\n<li>The school in Farson, an unincorporated village 10 miles west of Packwood, closed in 1970 (<em>Richland Clarion<\/em>, 1\/15\/70)<\/li>\n<li>Ringgold County, all presently part of Mount Ayr (formed 1958):\n<ul>\n<li>Beaconsfield\u2019s school closed in <del>1960, two<\/del> 1961, three years after its last high school class <del>(<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/misc\/sch-beaconsfieldidx.htm\">IAGenWeb<\/a>)<\/del><\/li>\n<li>Redding\u2019s school closed in 1970 (<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/redding\/sch-reddingindex.htm\">IAGenWeb<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Maloy\u2019s school closed in 1972 (<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/maloy\/sch-maloy.html\">IAGenWeb<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Tingley\u2019s school\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/tingley\/sch_tingleyindex.html\">closed in early 1980<\/a> and was demolished in late 1980 (<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/tingley\/sch_tingley_1980.html\">IAGenWeb<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>The school in Benton (a small town on IA 2) was demolished in 1982 (<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/misc\/sch-bentonidx.htm\">IAGenWeb<\/a>), but its closure year is ambiguous. Mount Ayr was using it for sixth-graders at least through 1977 (<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/mtayr\/1976-77bentonctr6th.htm\">IAGenWeb<\/a>). Mount Ayr passed a bond issue in early 1979 (<em>Des Moines Register<\/em>, 2\/14\/79) so <del>I assume<\/del> Benton closed in spring 1980, when an addition opened, along with Tingley.<\/li>\n<li>Said bond issue came after a state inspector condemned the oldest part of Mount Ayr&#8217;s complex in November 1977 and classes were scattered in other buildings throughout town (<em>DMR<\/em>, 2\/19\/79) &#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230; and also sent to the Ellston school. Despite being the newest building in the district it had been officially closed in 1970 (<em>DMR<\/em>, 7\/12\/70) but got junior high back for a <del>few<\/del> year<del>s<\/del> (<em>DMR<\/em>, 2\/1\/78). <del>It probably closed again in spring 1980.<\/del><\/li>\n<li>Delphos\u2019 school was demolished in 1991 (<a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/delphos\/delphoshsindx.htm\">IAGenWeb<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>The 1936 portion of the Mount Ayr school was demolished in 2010 (<em>Mt. Ayr Record News<\/em> via <a href=\"http:\/\/iagenweb.org\/ringgold\/schools\/mtayr\/sch-MAelementary_2010.html\">IAGenWeb<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The Harlan Community School District, which added towns in the western half of Shelby County, formed by vote in 1966 (<em>Harlan Tribune<\/em>, 6\/23\/66). Four towns \u2014 Defiance, Earling, Panama, and Portsmouth \u2014 kept kindergartens but ONLY kindergartens until sometime after 1970. I don&#8217;t have an end date because Harlan archives end that year right now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>UPDATE 1\/21\/22: Adjusted Beaconsfield based on new information.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE 5\/12\/25: Closure of both Benton and Tingley in 1980 confirmed via <em>Record-News<\/em>, 4\/17\/80 and 5\/15\/80. But Ellston was only used for one year, and a fraction of a year at that, before classes were moved to the basement of the otherwise-demolished 1912 building in Mount Ayr (4\/13\/78).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August 16, 2016: &#8220;There will be an informal opening of the new gymnasium at the Sharpsburg school on Saturday evening, October 10, at 8:00 o&#8217;clock [sic]. A snappy program is planned, followed by a lunch consisting of sandwiches, pie, pickles &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2021\/09\/school-timeline-mega-update-1968-70-plus-compilations\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13265"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15912,"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13265\/revisions\/15912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}