Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Micro towns in the west

Familiar with the situation.
I went to a one room country school in west central KS. Eight grades had 14-16 kids, total. I was the last person to graduate eight grade there in 1965.
It closed and kids were bussed to nearest town to class sizes of about 50 kids. Now those classes are 20-25.
People are not living in these rural areas. Unless you are a large land owner, there are few ways to make a living.

My kids school district is 30x60 miles... we have a few hundred kids, but many have long rides to get here.

When we lived in Cass County, NE, our local school was a three room school, an upgraded one room country school. The school was closed in the late 1990's or early 2000's and the students were bused to school in Plattsmouth, NE. I remember that the principal was reassigned as a teacher and the Plattsmouth School Board tried to break her contract because she made more money than any of her soon to be peers. They went to court and she won, but when her contract was up they didn't renew it, so she retired and started to collect her pension from them. Poetic justice.

I disagree. If you have a bar, you have a town.

Ha! Horse, not in the little berg I get mail out of, not even a coffee shop, Caseys we do have a big Caseys.

Love the names of some of those old country schools. Dad was born in 1916. He went to Yale, Harvard and Hooten. Outside of Winterset Ia.

Fake virus is the last straw in a lot of places.

School buses should go the way of the Dodo bird. Your kid, your responsibility to get them to school.

Hell, I think schools should be funded by those with kids. The government should be out of it, period.

It's funny that those that are the biggest drain on services, generally contribute the least. Your kid, your responsibility.

You are really doing good if you can buy gas on weekends.

My father attended a one-room school for grades 1 through 8. They had two books and a record player with two records. He listened while the older kids recited and managed to skip two grades. High school was about 10 miles away via school bus.

The nearest "town," about a mile from the school, was a crossroads where there was a grain elevator and a general store. A railroad came through it and about 35 people lived there. Now all that is long gone.

Great idea, but good luck. Lots of today’s parents are only worried about funding their next tattoo. They are content to let society support their kids.

Yesterday, in the small town of Roy, Montana......you pump your diesel......then go inside and the the guy how many dollars it was.

We have no schools in our town.Post office open 1/2 a day, convenience store,hardware store,gas station bait store,tavern,Cafe,Catholic Church only on Sundays.You can pass town on 141and not even know there is a town there except for the sign.

There's an old, remodeled, two room school house a mile from my farm. About 14 miles from the "big town" of Grace, ID. Today, everything is consolidated, and they are even talking about consolidating the high schools. Even in Mormon country, very few families with 8 or 9 kids, and far fewer farm help than there used to be. Many fewer people living on the land. Not a good thing.

I also love how 1/2 the school kids were going to starve during the shutdown because they couldn't have breakfast/lunch at school. Free food for all kids. What a frigging shame. Your kid, your responsibility.

The Mormons are still a bit ahead of average here....but the Catholic and Mormon families are a shell of what they used to be.

There are a lot of little towns on the plains of eastern Colorado. Leftovers from a time when transportation was more difficult and time consuming. Many have died all together. Just ghost towns now. Others still hanging on with just a few residents and lots of vacant buildings.

I'm pretty familiar with one in particular. There's a handfull of houses and a grain elevator. A few vacant buildings lining the highway. No businesses. The K-12 school is located on the open prairie next to the highway, halfway between my little town and another. It's thriving because even though there aren't many people in the tiny towns there are numerous farms in ever direction, that provide the school with students.

It's peaceful. I recently talked to my friend who lives there and he mentioned that there was no virus because they are so isolated. One town to the north of him has a construction project underway and some of the workers are commuting from the cities on the front range and they have brought some virus with them.

You are going to see more remote learning in the coming years. What the op described is the same thing that's starting to happen in western Kansas. The state health director even referred to some counties in far western Kansas as "frontier counties." I can see another big round of consolidation looming in the near future.

Pretty amazing. My grandparents didn't start high school.

For many years the little ranching community of Wayan, Idaho, which is about 20 miles from Freedom, Wyoming had a 2 room school house. My cousins rode their horses to school most days if the weather permitted. Sadly they closed it down a few years ago & now they bus all the kids into Soda Springs which is about 30 miles. Grades 1-4 went there.
Beautiful area with Caribou Mountain in the background.

Dick