Spring Branch School | 40+ Pictures

City/Town: • Cedar Vale

Location Class: • School

Built: • 1880's | Abandoned: • 1960-70s

Status: • Abandoned • Endangered

Photojournalist: • Emily Cowan

Spring Branch School was a one-room five-month subscription country school. It is evident that a school bell used to be in place above the entrance but has since disappeared. The school consisted of a chalkboard and a raised stage area where the teachers’ desks would be.

The school had often been a meeting place for the community holding ice cream socials with music, Sunday school, clubs and debates in the building. In later years it had what was called “pie suppers” which attracted current students and alumni of the Spring Branch school, on October 15, 1915, forty high school students attended the pie supper at the one-room Spring Branch School House.

The County Liner and Cedar Vale Commercial reported May 4, 1917 “The Spring Branch school board went to the schoolhouse on Saturday night after school closed to get the books and records for fear tramps might destroy them. They walked boldly up to the door and started to unlock it. From the inside roared a gruff voice “What the is going on?” “Why, we are the school board, and want to get some books inside,” came the answer.

“Get away from here you !!” came from the inside, whereupon the meek and lowly members of the school board beat a disorderly retreat for their trenches. The fellows inside then gave them the laugh and the school board hasn’t had the nerve to come to town since. The men inside were patrons of the district and were out looking for fun and found it.”

Eventually, Spring Branch was consolidated with Cedar Vale and discontinued as a schoolhouse but in the 1960s-70s, the old schoolhouse was used by the Cedar Vale 4-H Go-Getters before it was abandoned all together. In its current state the building risks collapsing in on itself.