WELCOME

Opened in 1896, Stove Prairie School is the oldest operating “one-room” school in Colorado. Stove Prairie joined Poudre School District in 1960. Now one of PSD’s three mountain schools, this little school “at the end of the rainbow” offers a multi-grade learning environment.

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Written by Mrs. Rosemary Vannorsdel. Originally published in the Stove Prairie Cookbook.

The original one-room schoolhouse was constructed in 1896–1897 by Mr. Emanul Vannorsdel and Mr. Harlen Bosworth. The Bosworths arrived in Stove Prairie from Bellvue in the fall of 1894 with two school-age boys. The Vannorsdels arrived in the early spring of 1895 from Beaver City, Nebraska, with five sons and five daughters.

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Mr. Vannorsdel, who lived one mile south of the crossroads, sawed the lumber for the school at his sawmill. He and Mr. Bosworth, who lived two miles west of the crossroads on the county road known as the Flowers Wagon Road, built the school with occasional help from other neighbors in the area. That same little one-room school still stands as part of the present-day Stove Prairie School at the crossroads.

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The schoolhouse had a belfry at first, but it was removed after the first year because snow sifted down into the classroom when the wind blew. The school was heated with a wood stove that stood in the middle of the room. On cold days, the children froze on one side and baked on the other.

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One of the many duties of the schoolchildren was to carry wood in for the stove. The wood was furnished by the parents, who were usually also members of the school board. This was still the policy in the late 1940s and 1950s. It was a happy day for the children, parents, and teacher when a gas stove was finally purchased for the school around 1955.

Water was not available at the schoolhouse then. Families living near the school brought water each morning. Later, water was piped to the school from a spring one-fourth of a mile east. This was very good water.

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In 1904, thirty-seven pupils attended this little one-room school with just one teacher. Soon after that, three other schools were started in District 18. One was in a small log cabin on Buckhorn Mountain, known as the Welch Park School. Another school was started on Kimball Hill, about three miles south of Stove Prairie School. A third was started on Buckhorn Creek. That schoolhouse still stands on the Wertz Ranch.

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With the new schools starting, there were only two students left near Stove Prairie School: Blanche and Dana Vannorsdel. It was decided to close Stove Prairie for the year, and Blanche and Dana drove a horse and buggy to Kimball Hill School for one year. By the time school opened the following fall, two new families had moved in near the school. Stove Prairie School reopened and has not been closed since.

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School board meetings could get a little rough back then, too. Our school board might think their meetings get a little heated now, but all the old-timers remember one school board election when several people from the district’s outer edges came to the school with guns strapped on and in a very ugly mood. It seems they were getting pretty tired of the entire school board being made up of people who lived right around the school. But when all the votes were counted, the same people still had the most votes. They went away without anyone getting shot.

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The first teacher was Miss Belle Thompson. Teachers in the early days of the school had to board with families in the community. Keeping a teacher was a problem in those days. Many of the teachers married young men in the community, and a new teacher would then have to be found. More often than not, the teachers who came to teach in the mountain schools were very special people. They often gave much more to the community than just their teaching. Children at Stove Prairie School were each treated as special individuals instead of simply faces in a large crowd.

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In 1964, a new classroom was added, along with indoor restrooms for the first time in 67 years. In 1972, we finally got our long-hoped-for multi-purpose room, a new classroom, and an office.