Over a half-century later, classes return to White Oaks Schoolhouse for "Pioneer School Day 1895"
Photos from May 11, 2007, Pioneer School Day with 3rd, 4th & 5th grade classes from Carrizozo Schools.
News coverage on Pioneer School Day 1895 in the May 18, 2007, Ruidoso News.
Take a virtual tour of one of the schoolhouse's classrooms (Quicktime).
Story & photos by Brad Cooper
Sixty-five years after closing, the sound of students once again filled the White Oaks Schoolhouse last week when Carrizozo teachers held classes in the historical centerpiece of this gold-mining ghost town off U.S. 54 in south central New Mexico.
The two-story four-room schoolhouse, currently under the care of the non-profit White Oaks Historical Association, was built in 1895 when White Oaks was reportedly the second largest city in the state (behind Santa Fe). White Oaks “died” when community fathers attempted to sell the railroad right of way (instead of give it to them), and the gold panned out.
The last classes taught in White Oaks, until May 11, were in 1942.
Though listed in several guides as a “ghost town,” the community is more of a ghost of what it used to be, than an abandoned town. About 15 residents live in the old township, and dozens more outside of it. It’s dotted with artist studios and a recently gentrified “No Scum Allowed Saloon” with wireless Internet, a wine rack and real indoor plumbing.
Carrizozo teachers Becca Ferguson, Rima Davis, Annie Serna, Polly Chavez and Dena O’Dell organized the living history field trip tagged “Pioneer School Day 1895.” Many of the 43 third, fourth and fifth-graders bused to the schoolhouse were wearing period clothing supplied by White Oaks resident Ruth Birdsong.
“I have always believed in experiential education, doing things hands on, and I think that most people learn best through hands-on experiences. Those are the times that I remember from my school years. They’re the best way to teach anybody…kids or adults,” said art and music instructor Dena O’Dell, who lives in an historic adobe on the outskirts of White Oaks.
Classes were conducted on era clothing by historian Pat Cooper, as well as an oral history session with area residents, now in their 80’s, who actually went to school in the structure.
“Do you know what the first day of school was like?” asked Larue Wetzel, a retired Carrizozo teacher, of a class. “We came to school with a bag, we didn’t have backpacks back then, and we always had our Big Chief tablet and a pencil,” she said, pulling a tablet out of a bag, “and it was up to us to supply our own pencils. School always started the day after Labor Day.
“It used to be that there were a lot of empty houses here in White Oaks. In the summer the families would be out on the ranches and then in late August they’d come in and fix up an old house and the women, the mothers and children, would live here so the kids could go to school. The men would ride in whenever they could to be with them,” she said.
“Some people say that you don’t get a good education (in a four room schoolhouse like White Oaks), but we’ve got teachers, inventors and scientists, and lots of important people who came through this school,” said Wetzel, who still resides in an historic Victorian two-story brick home in White Oaks known as the “Hoyle House.” She attended classes at the schoolhouse in the late 1930’s.
Other former students discussing the “old days” with today’s school children were Clarence Leslie and Inez Ballenger, whose mother was the only teacher (thus principal) of the school when electricity was first introduced from a power plant near the community.
“My brother was one of the boy janitors here and when my mother had electricity put into the room downstairs he tested it out with a rusty nail and another boy told on him and he lost his job,” said Inez Ballenger. “He went on to become an important inventor, inventing the underwater telephone.”
Three of the four classrooms at the schoolhouse still do not have electricity and depend on large windows for light. White Oaks was an “eastern influenced” frontier town with many of the buildings constructed from brick made in nearby Ancho (instead of adobe) and with pitched roofs (instead of New Mexico flat).
“Are those the only restrooms available?” one student asked a teacher about the “his” and “hers” outhouses nearby.
Other class activities included a poetry recital (many from memory, though a group of gentlemen read from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”), paper quilt making session, and a day-ending floor-clearing dance from the era.
The “main room” of the schoolhouse has an inlaid floor miners paid to have installed so that they could roller-skate there.
“This is what this building was meant to do and it’s good to see it back at work,” said Leslie, who is also the historical association’s board chairman. “This needs to happen more often.”
The Pioneer School Day 1985 was a prototype of a curriculum that may soon be offered to teachers regionally. “Absolutely,” said O’Dell, “it’s a very transferable experience. I think that other schools could come up here and experience a similar kind of classroom day very easily. You could bring any grade level here, but I really think that it’d have the most impact on upper-elementary grades (3rd, 4th and 5th). You might have to adapt it for older students.
“Next year we’re hoping to add an experience where the students write a letter to someone as though they were living here in the late 1800s,” she added.
The association is currently looking into grants to help regional school districts with transportation costs (which reportedly run over $2 per mile for buses, and is expected to go up next school year), and study guides in order to offer the historical school day to other teachers in September-October and April-May days. For information email theschoolhouse@whiteoaksnewmexico.com
One of the grant line items will be for firewood. The schoolhouse has no central heating and only one pot-bellied stove is left to heat the classrooms, making late fall and winter months impossible.
The White Oaks Schoolhouse (Museum) is currently open to visitors Saturdays (10-4) and Sundays (noon-4).
The historical association, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, has been concentrating on a decade-plus quest to raise funds to replace the structure’s roof. Each year more money is added to the roof kitty, and each year the estimate for the replacement seems to go up by greater amount.
The once-again schoolhouse (which residents pitched in $10,000 to build in the 1890s on land donated by the state’s first governor) will need a $23,000-plus roof in the near future.
