Abandoned School

Kay and I love to travel dirt roads. We normally drive these on our dual sport bikes, but occasionally we take our Jeep. This time because of the cold weather we were in our Jeep Wrangler, just tooling along for an afternoon ride north of Crescent, and ran across this interesting, burned down school house. Being the intrepid explorers we are, I asked Kay “want to jump the fence and explore?” After 30+ years of marriage, I knew her answer before I asked the question. “SURE!”

We hopped the fence and wandered through the old school yard and remains of this school. The walls were still standing but the roof had caved in from fire. I wasn’t sure if it was a school at first, but the remains of burned school desks confirmed our guess.

Who had attended this school? I always wonder what kids sat in the chairs, listening to the teacher explain about Oklahoma history or math or a science problem, while the kids gazed outdoors waiting on spring to arrive. Normally you can find a clue by looking at the walls of the school – kids with idle time on their hands like to carve their names and romances into the stone. Yet this time I had to look hard to find an inscription. I guess the teachers were a bit strict and attentive.

It was also interesting that this school, like many from the same era, had a storm cellar. After the devastation after the 2013 Moore tornado, I wondered when storm cellars became unpopular at schools? If it seemed like a good idea in the 1920’s was it not a good idea in the 1980’s?

This abandoned schoolhouse is easy to find. The roads are dirt and gravel so a pickup truck, Jeep or other rugged vehicle is recommended, although you could travel to this site with most any passenger car – if you don’t mind getting it dirty.

You can copy and paste these GPS coordinates into Google Maps to find the location. 36.058575000 -97.532147222