OLD SCHOOLS OF WASHINGTON …and a Mystery School
On a damp morning in late May, Carol Lew, Tom Hoffman, and I drove together to the crest of Johnson Hill Road where Carol, our local history sleuth, told us to stop. We were hoping to find the foundation for the elegant school pictured here and labeled simply: Washington School House.
Tom, the chairman of our town’s Historical Commission, had armed us with maps from 1858, 1876, and 1904. We were pretty sure we would find the foundation of the school shown on the maps, perhaps the one pictured here with its unusual tall windows.
Ducking through the drapery of wet leaves hanging over the stone wall we found a neat foundation of cut granite stones. But the land did not rise gently behind the foundation as it does in the photograph; it dropped in a rather steep downward slope. This may have been the site of one of our schools, but alas not the Mystery School.
Prior to 1953, when the school at Route 8 and Summit Hill Road was built – now the Town Hall – there were as many as 8 schools in the town, and possibly two more. The only one surviving example is on Washington Mountain Road, near Watson Road and alongside the Shaker Brook. It was salvaged in the In the mid 1970’s by the town historian Sally Poland, members of the PTA and volunteers from the town. They hoped it would serve as a memory of all the one room school houses that used to be in the town. Volunteers shingled the roof, re-pointed the chimney, replaced the rotted sills and painted the building inside and out.
Since then, the town has maintained the building, once known as the South Center School, and Tom has the keys. Inside, we pass through a vestibule with a ladder on the left up to a trap door to the attic. Through the doorway we see 11 old wooden desks set on cast-iron legs and arranged more or less in rows. The larger teacher’s desk is set apart by the southeast window where sunlight pours in. There are three large blackboards, and an imposing black wood stove takes pride of place between the two back windows overlooking Shaker Brook.
Peering out through one of the windows at the brook, I am reminded of the reminiscences of Martha Gardener. In the 1977 Town History Book she writes about the magic of the woods behind the school, the wildflowers, the secret spring that students used to visit and how, during recess, students would fish in the brook.
Martha recounts how the brook supplied the students with water; in winter, one of the boys would go out to chop the ice and fill “the common pail supplied with a dipper.” She recalled the clatter of hooves and rumbling of wheels over the bridge near the school house; this might signal the arrival of the superintendent or the art teacher or perhaps the music teacher.
Back in 1783, the town fathers voted “to raise the sum of 80 pounds to build four school houses, one in each of the four districts as set off by the town,” according to our town history book (1977). Over the years, the districts expanded to eight with at least as many schools. On the town map from 1858, there are nine schools shown; on the 1876 map, there are eight schools including the Valley School, pictured in an inset. The 1904 map also has eight, including one in what is now the State Forest, around the corner from what had been a nearby school on the previous map. Tom speculates that that school which would have been on School House Road was swallowed up by the reservoir built in the 1880s and called Schoolhouse Lake!
By 1922 the North Center School and the South Center School closed, and those children went to school in Dalton. Over the years, the Valley School became more crowded, and the need for repairs and amenities like indoor bathrooms grew more urgent. By 1949, land was given for a new school and by 1953 the town completed the school building on the corner of Washington State Road and Summit Hill Road.
“The schools are confusing, to say the least” says Tom who has searched the forest for old foundations and deeds for clues. Schools in town came and went; some were rebuilt, one burned down, and others opened and closed depending on the seasons and the shifting population. The school near the four corners, sometimes called the West School, in what would become our State Forest, was closed in 1898, according to our town history, because there were only three students left after farms large and small were purchased for William Whitney and his game preserve. Those three students were then taught at the home of Mrs. Kent, a former teacher, presumably still living in the area.
But what about the Mystery School? On both the 1858 map and the 1876 map a school is shown at the junction of Lovers Land and Frost Road, on the south side of Depot Brook. That’s where Tom and I continued our quest.
We met at the clearing at the southwest side of the brook. There did not appear to be any identifying stones nor was there any evidence of old stone supports for a bridge leading toward Stone House Road. Further, nothing showed on Tom’s Lidar map on his phone; were there a foundation under the grasses and brush it would show on Lidar. Nor did the steep rise behind the clearing match the land behind the Mystery School. It did, however, match the steep rise in the old photo of the Eden Glen Resort which was located at the top of the rise. (See Tracks article from February 2025 on Depot Brook showing the old photo of the Eden Glen Resort.)
Perhaps the old foundation could have been cleared away when the Town Highway Department built their garage and storage area here, before the new Highway Department facility was built off of Route 8 by the Transfer Station.
As Tom says, “You go off looking for one thing and you find something else entirely.” In this case we found the site of the old Eden Glen Resort not the school foundation.
So, the Mystery School remains a mystery. If anyone in town has further clues, please contact Tom, and we’ll go one another search…..
