The present-day school at Camp Sherman
is the
third school to have been built in the community. The first
schoolhouse,
constructed of 14-by-18-foot logs, was built in the 1880s near First
Creek,
west of Allingham bridge. The Black Butte School was in operation
before
Camp Sherman was established and named. The first school was replaced
by
a log schoolhouse, constructed in 1917 by Harry Heising, Ed Parks and
Earl
Updike. Some of the students had to walk or ride horseback several
miles
to school. The teacher had to split firewood, light the potbellied
stove,
teach the students, then do janitorial work after classes. The stove
not
only kept the schoolhouse warm but was used to dry soaked clothing.
Jean
Powell Reckman, in her recollections of the log schoolhouse,
wrote:
In the summer of 1936, I was
lucky enough
to get a contract to teach eight and one-half months in the Black Butte
School. It was still Depression time and many who graduated that year
did
not get employed. My salary was seventy-five dollars a month and five
dollars per month for janitor work. I walked over two miles to school.
Of course, my board and room only cost one dollar a day so I probably
did
better than the teachers of today. No car, no insurance, no income tax
and cheap clothes.
I had three pupils: Dick Heising, first
grade;
Lou Henrichs, second grade, and Kitty Bruns, third grade. Of course,
the
parents furnished the transportation and we all brought drinking
water.
Every week a five gallon cream can was brought in for us to wash our
hands.
That year, the board somehow found twenty-five dollars extra in the
budget
and Wilma Henrichs, Lou's mother, found an old pump organ for that
amount.
She then came faithfully and played it for the children to sing. At
Christmas
time we had our usual children's program and then everyone sang
Christmas
carols.
Mary Zevely Fraser also had fond
remembrances
of the Black Butte School, recalling that in 1940-41 when her mother
taught
at the school she often walked the nearly two miles to school in good
weather
to save on gas, and also when they were unable to get the car started
in
winter. She said, "We often saw deer on this walk, and once a cougar
crossed
the road in front of us. There was a creek nearby from which we filled
the water buckets while mother built the fire. The creeks and river
were
perfectly pure then."
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