Lanesdale Rural Schoolhouse

history of the Lanesdale one-room schoolhouse…

The first Lanesdale School was built in 1874 and was a log school house. The school was in the Laketown District 3 and its first teacher was Euphemia Densmore. The school was located off County Road N, one and one-half miles east of Cushing and a half-mile north. In the 1880’s, the log building was moved to a nearby farm and a second building was built on the site. The Lanesdale School integrated with Luck in 1957 and the one-room school was operated until 1961, when it was discontinued. This school was one of the last country schoolhouses in Polk County. In January of 1964, the school house found a new home when it was moved to Balsam Lake and became a school museum, operated by the Polk County Historical Society. Today the Polk County Historical Society uses the building for school tours, special events, and a 3-day Pioneer School experience each summer for students ages 6 - 14. See our events page for more details and registration.

There were as many as 82 pupils in the one-room school house at the time Mrs. George Hanson (Emma Erickson), of Cushing, taught there in 1910 - 1912. The teacher before her was Mrs. Alert Larson (Lily Peterson) who taught there in 1908, right after graduation form the Normal School. She recalls that she had 72 pupils and “you could hardly walk through the aisles for all the boots and rubbers and lunch buckets.”

Here are some exerts from the story, “My First School Days”, of that first log school at Lanesdale, written by Mrs. Anton Nelson in the 1940’s:

“Some sixty years ago I went to school in a little log building which stood on the same site as the present school house. It had two small windows on each side of the building; the blackboards were made of boards that were painted black and very rough. We used cloth to erase the writing, and it raised a cloud of dust when the blackboards were being wiped off! “
“We also had homemade seats; the school was heated by a box stove, and at noon we used to sit around it thawing out our bread and placing it on top of the stove. The room was very cold, so our lunches would freeze standing around on the floor.”
“In those days, no matter how many children went from home, the lunch was carried in one pail and the size of the pail would have to compare with the number of children going to school from that family. I know of instances where the lunch was carried in a small milk pail! There would often be a quarrel - if not a fight - over who should carry the lunch pail. Each child always brought a bottle of milk to drink.”
“There were practically no settlers between our home and the school house. No public roads. We had a trail blazed through the wilderness; we usually had only five months of school during the year, and it started in the first part of November.”
“Besides reading, we studied arithmetic, spelling and geography. These were the only subjects taught at that time. Some years later, history and grammar were added and as the years went on other studies were added. All the books had to be purchased by the parents, as the District did not furnish free textbooks. We used slates for all written work and it sure was some noise when the teacher told us to go to work, and all our slates came up on our desks at once!”

“Don’t Quote Me, But . . .” A Sporadic Standard-Press Column - By R. E. V.