Timelines for rural Buena Vista and Clay county schools
Mergers and crackups from Brooke Township to South Clay
A 2022 article in the Storm Lake Times Pilot prompted a delve into more history about schools in the region. OK, “delve” may be underselling it. Searchable newspaper archives are the greatest thing since tabbed browsing.
Five consolidated schools were built in outlying areas of Buena Vista County before World War II. The outcomes of four are detailed below. The Lincoln-Lee school dissolved in 1946.
This writeup is typical of the research I do for my comprehensive timeline of changes to Iowa school districts. For more, visit my blog, especially the series of posts from a “mega-update” in August 2021.
There’s more to the history than just dates. A website run by Rembrandt school alumni has information- and photo-rich memorial compilations of old schools in the area. One of the site’s most recent histories was that of the all-school reunion itself, which ended in 2021.
Key: AA=Alta Advertiser; PP=Peterson Patriot; SLPT=Storm Lake Pilot Tribune; SRBP=Sioux Rapids Bulletin Press
Sioux Valley was a merger of Linn Grove and Peterson in 1958 (Sioux City Journal, 3/26/58), with both retaining a high school for one year. The Department of Public Instruction proposed having the high school in Peterson and junior high in Linn Grove, with both retaining grades K-3. A counterproposal was made with the high school in Linn Grove and junior high in Peterson with both retaining K-6. Linn Grove won the high school by 30 votes. (Cherokee Daily Times, 3/3/59, 3/10/59)
The editor of the Everly News (reprinted in the Patriot) had a good chortle over this. “The people from Peterson figured they had the election in the bag, so to speak, and didn’t bother to take time to go to the polls.” The Patriot editor asked, “Was he right?” (PP, 3/26/59)
Sioux Valley grew in size in 1960 by taking a significant part of Highview and part of Brooke (SRBP, 6/30/60).
Alta and Fairview merged in 1960 (SLPT, 12/10/59), and then added the rest of Highview in 1961 (AA, 6/8/61).
Fairview had closed its high school in 1958 (AA, 6/12/58).
Highview’s high school also closed in 1958, with a graduating class of three. The commencement speaker was Buena Vista College’s president (SRBP, 5/22/58).
The Fairview school’s location was discovered via the 1923 Buena Vista County atlas. It was on M36 half a mile north of IA 3. Despite its invisibility, it was used as a school until 1967 (SLPT, 9/14/67), then given over to Head Start for seven years (AA, 10/4/74). Aerial photos indicate it was demolished during the 2004-05 school year.
This Quonset hut is the Cornell gymnasium, seen September 20, 2023, in Clay County, Iowa. The bond to build it was $35,000. Photo by author. Sioux Rapids and the not-even-a-map-dot of Cornell merged in 1961 (SRBP, 8/18/60). Cornell is on 485th Street, the original route of Iowa Highway 374 to Webb.
A Cornell “rump district” joined up with Gillett Grove and Webb to form South Clay in 1963. (SLPT, 11/22/62)
The Cornell school, built in 1914, was used as part of the Sioux Rapids district until 1967. The gymnasium was built in 1948. The two unconnected buildings still stand today. (SRBP, 12/4/47, 11/16/67, 9/4/69)
Auction of the Cornell property and contents included three pianos, “approximately 100 school desks,” four stoves, the entire playground, and the buildings themselves. The school was turned into a museum. (SRBP, 10/23/69, 5/13/71)
Clay Central consolidation was defeated in 1963 and then approved in 1964 (SRBP, 6/6/63, 4/9/64)
Before that, Greenville and Rossie consolidated some time in the mid-1940s. “The bride graduated with the Greenville-Rossie high school in 1497 [typo, 1947]. The groom graduated from the Greenville high school with the class of 1943. He served in the army for two years, part of which was spent overseas.” (SRBP, 12/4/47; see also PP, 2/5/48)
Rossie’s school closed in 1982 (SRBP, 3/17/82)
A closure year for Greenville was unavailable. Its post-closure life took a detour through an attempted sale of the site to the Unification Church. The property was sold to the city of Greenville for $1 instead, which planned to demolish the original building. (SRBP, 9/27/78)
Brooke Township, in the northwest corner of Buena Vista County, had a 1917 consolidated school at the intersection of C16 and M27. The district was broken up through the enlargement of Sioux Valley and merger of the rest with Aurelia. The building was sold in 1961 and the site used for Midwest Christian Services. A tornado ripped the roof off in 1995 and the building was demolished afterward. (Aurelia Sentinel, 6/16/60, 9/14/61; PP, 6/29/60; SLPT, 11/18/95, 9/11/97)
Hayes Township school is on 100th Avenue half a mile south of C65 on the south side of Storm Lake (the lake). The school burned to the ground October 8, 1940 and was replaced in a year (Storm Lake Register, 10/8/40; SLPT, 10/30/41). Hayes merged with Storm Lake (the school district) in 1961. Its IAGenWeb page says elementary classes ended there in 1973, but that actually happened a year earlier (SLPT, 6/15/61, 3/22/72). The 1941 building remains today.
Webb’s school closed in 1984 (SRBP, 2/15/84)
A super-district quintuple-header of Clay Central, Rembrandt, Sioux Rapids, Sioux Valley, and South Clay was floated in 1977, but was pre-empted by a prolonged Sioux Rapids-Rembrandt process that ended with those districts merging in 1979. (PP, 1/20/77, 2/24/77; SRBP, 10/25/78, 12/13/78)
A new school would have been built near the junction of US 71 and the Webb road (now County Road B63) north of Sioux Rapids, not that far from Cornell.
A merger of Sioux Rapids-Rembrandt and Sioux Valley that would have sent a chunk of the latter to Clay Central failed in December 1982. (PP, 7/22/82, 12/9/82)
The exclusion of some land was a decision by the Area Education Agencies involved, and the districts sued to reverse that, but failed. (PP, 4/15/82)
Sioux Valley voted 2-to-1 against the merger, in part because of the involuntary loss of land, but more because Peterson didn’t want to lose its school. The merger lost in the Rembrandt area for the same reason. (Storm Lake Register, 12/11/82)
Peterson wouldn’t have been in that situation in 1982 had it won the high school in 1959. However, it got to keep its school until all outlying schools in the Sioux Central district closed in 1997.
Whole-grade sharing as Sioux Central began in 1990, and a full consolidation, boundaries intact, happened in 1993. (SRBP, 6/14/89, 9/9/92)
The most recent change in the area, boundary-wise, was the dissolution of South Clay in 2010. Towns in the district were split up as about half the area went to Spencer and half went to Sioux Central.
The most recent change in the area, school-wise, was Clay Central-Everly giving up grades 7-12 in 2019. The high school building in Everly was closed as a result. Those with knowledge of girls’ basketball history in Iowa remember the Everly teams of yore, playing under one of the best nicknames, the Cattlefeederettes.
One other closure
Snow and sleet storm stops power, phone service; business nil
Due to lack of power the linotype machine in this office is out of commission and the setting of type impossible. A portion of this type, which you are reading, was set Thursday morning at Laurens, by The Laurens Sun.
The actual printing was accomplished during several of the 1-hour periods which we were allocated. We feel fortunate to be able to deliver this issue even though late.
— Sioux Rapids Bulletin Press, 3/24/66
The Bulletin Press, “A growing newspaper for a growing community,” was shuttered in 1999.
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