18 GRADE SCHOOLS IN “SANDY” AREA
The first school in the “Sandy area” was the Revenue School, a log building constructed in about 1868 by Francis Revenue with the help of his eldest son, John, who at age 14, yarded logs to the site. It was located on what is now Ten Eyck Road on the first level bench of cultivated land above the present Revenue Bridge over the Sandy River, and about 1 1⁄2 miles north of Sandy. As Revenues were the first settlers in the area in 1853, this was the only way to get his nine children educated. As several new families settled near the Revenues, their children were invited to also attend the school.
The following is a list of the Grade Schools and the approximate dates they began: Revenue, 1870; Sandy Ridge, early 1870s; Cherryville 1873; Marmot, 1879; High Forest - Kelso, 1879; Boring, 1883; Deep Creek, sometime from the late 1800s to the early 1900s; Sandy, 1886; Bull Run, late 1880s; Dover, 1889; second Sandy elementary, 1890; Cottrell, 1890; Firwood, 1893; Aims, 1894; Hillcrest, 1913; Greenwood, 1914; Brightwood in about 1915; and Welches a bit later. In Sandy was the Immanuel Lutheran School, a parochial school opened in 1904 that had some accredited grade school courses.
The first Sandy Grade School had an unusual situation. It was built on the south side of Cedar Creek about a mile down Meinig Hill on what is now Ten Eyck Road. One would expect it to be located in the little town where most of the people were. But the Revenues, Coalmans, Mitchells, and a few others that lived down the hill must have had more influence as students in town had to walk down the hill and back for 22 years until the “new” Sandy school was built in 1908 on Meinig property at the northwest corner of the intersection of Hwy 26 and Langensand Road. It became a two-room, two-teacher school in 1909. In 1914 a second story was added to that grade school. The two upstairs rooms were vacant when the first Sandy High School District was formed, so they served as high school classrooms for nine years until the first Sandy High School building was ready in 1923.
As the area grew, by the late 1920s there would be 18 Grade Schools in the “Sandy Area” which together with Sandy High School, since 1997, became known as the unified Oregon Trail School District. The reason there were so many schools was that the roads were so bad that children had to walk to school; therefore, the schools had to be within a reasonable walking distance.
The “High Forest” School was built near the location of the “new” (in 1980) Kelso School. It was a building of hewed logs that served from 1879 until about 1889 when it was replaced by a new wood-framed schoolhouse. The district re-named it Kelso School. That new building burned to the ground in 1902 when the east wind spread a
fire from adjacent land. The school was re-built soon after and still is in use as the Sandy Grange building.
My aunt, Ana Rodlun, taught in the High Forest log building. When she married, she had to resign because the custom was that if the spouse was gainfully employed, one income in the family should be sufficient. My aunt was replaced as a teacher by her sister who was my mother, Tillie Olson. My mother taught there one year and one year in the new Kelso wood-framed building, then married my dad who was gainfully self-employed, so she then had to resign. My dad said that he saved her from a job shared with another lady of teaching 45 students in a two-room school for $25.00 a month which wasn’t too great a situation!
All 18 Grade Schools are pictured in our Sandy Historical Society’s museum.
This material is from Hometown Sandy Oregon by Phil Jonsrud, copyright 2011 by Sandy Historical Society, pp. 48-50. Photo is courtesy of Sandy Historical Society.
