Patriotic fervor swelled across America in 1918 as the “Dough Boys,” officially known as the American Expeditionary Force, tilted the greatest war in human history (to that time) in favor of the Allied Powers as war raged on the shell-torn fields of Belgium and France.
Hundreds of young men from Fremont County answered the call, with several dozen never returning home. Some were buried in French and Belgian cemeteries; others were never found, obliterated to atoms by shell bursts fired from German artillery.
In September 1918, as the war moved toward an Allied victory, the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive began in Fremont County. W.E. Hardin was the director of the drive. His plan for spreading the word to Fremont County residents went through local school districts.
Today, we have just a handful of districts, though Fremont County has more than any other county in Wyoming. It is a source of annoyance for many non-Fremont County legislators in Cheyenne with each session of the legislature.
Fremont #1 Lander, #2 Dubois, #6 Wind River, #14 Ethete, #21 Fort Washakie, #24 Shoshoni, #25 Riverton, and #38 Arapaho make a total of eight in our little corner of paradise.
In 1918, Mr. Hardin had a few more to choose from. There were 39 school districts in Fremont County in 1918.
Just five years before, there were 42.
Hot Springs County was created in 1913 from the northern section of Fremont County, and the southern boundary of Big Horn County.
Until 1913, Thermopolis was part of Fremont County.
In January 1898, Fremont County School District 16 was formed in Thermopolis with Joe Magill hired by the district as its first teacher.
Mr. Magill was the first to be hired by the district, but many others were already teaching either in Thermopolis or in many one-room rural schools that dotted the area on the other side of the Owl Creek Mountains.
Schools buses in the early days – h/t Wyoming State Archives
The same was true to the west of the Wind River Range. Schools around Pinedale were part of the fund drive in 1918.
Sublette County wasn’t created until 1923, and it was part of Fremont County as far west as Cora. Unita County bordered Fremont in those days until 1911, when Lincoln was created.
In 1921, Teton County was established.
Originally, Wyoming had just five counties, and each one was responsible for the education of the children within their boundaries.
Wyoming schools began locally. A few ranch families joined together, ran an ad for a teacher, provided housing, at first a room in the home of one of the families, or later in the back of the schoolhouse, and eventually in a teacherage located near the school.
The problems faced by these early teachers were epic in comparison to the workload of a teacher today.
Most rural schools taught grades one to eight in the same room. Contrary to the images we see on old television programs like The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, with the rows of desks filled with eager, compliant children.
Discipline was a daily occurrence in many schools and the credo of “spare the rod, spoil the child” was followed faithfully by the teacher.
An example of the problems a teacher could face appeared in a Lander newspaper of the era, the Wind River Mountaineer, in a story written about a county school 80 miles away by horse or coach in 1897.
ROWDYISM AT THERMOPOLIS SCHOOL – Wind River Mountaineer – March 15, 1897
On the second day of this month, a group of men—known as Jakey McCan, Dave Shannon, Willie Price, and Fred Rogers—came to the public school at noon with the apparent intention of courting the minds of twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls who attend the school. The teacher, seeing that this behavior could lead to something harmful if allowed to continue, added another clause to the school rules:”
“None of the students or pupils of this school shall entertain any person during school hours, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
The men mentioned above were under the influence of liquor. The saloon keepers, tired of their misconduct, told them to leave town. Instead, they went to the schoolhouse and were there when the teacher returned from dinner. They were smoking cigarettes and using indecent language—actions that violate the school laws of Wyoming.
When the teacher spoke about these violations, one of the pupils, Fred Slid, brought the news to the men. They returned at recess and repeated the same behavior, except they did not enter the school building. Instead, they stood outside making threats, saying they intended to come inside and dance.
We hope these outlaws will soon find something else to occupy their time—either behind bars or in some backwoods place where there is no civilization. The sooner this happens, the better for the community. The reason is simple: people of good morals will not come to a place where outlaws reign. Banish the outlaws and bring in morality in order to cause prosperity.
Signed: Tom Dorman
The first “official” school in Wyoming was in Fremont County, at South Pass, soon after territorial status was achieved in July 1868. Miss Minnie Slaughter was the first teacher at the elementary school when it opened in September 1869.
The influx of miners, many who brought their wives and children with them to South Pass, Atlantic City and Miner’s Delight created the demand for a school. It became the Fremont County School District years later, after Wyoming became a state, and the legislature clarified the requirements, boundaries, mill levies, and taxation methods used to fund public schools.
The first school of any kind in Wyoming came in 1851 at Ft Laramie, where a schoolhouse was built on the post grounds for the children of officers and non-commissioned officers.
At about the same time, Judge Carter hired a teacher at Ft. Bridger to teach the children of soldiers and local citizens.
The Wind River Reservation was created in 1868. Chief Washakie, as part of his agreement to form the Shoshone Bannock Reservation, called for a school to be built for the Native American children to learn the White man’s language and customs.
In 1877, after the defeat of the 7th Cavalry under Custer at the Greasy Grass, the Arapaho Tribe was split into two groups: the Southern Arapaho were sent to Oklahoma, and the Northern Arapaho were placed on the Shoshone Reservation, which was changed to the Wind River Reservation.
Sharp Nose, a chief of the Arapaho, could see what was happening to his people and knew that the youth of the tribe would have to learn the White man’s ways. He sent his son to a boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
In 1883, John Roberts, an Episcopalian priest, received permission from the Native agent and began teaching local children at his cabin on Trout Creek.
The school was popular among the Shoshone people, as was the Rev. Roberts. Demand was so high that children from distant sections of the reservation sometimes slept on the floor in Robert’s cabin.
Jesuits arrived and began a mission and school at St. Stephen’s, on the largely Arapaho portion of the reservation.
In 1892, an Office of Indian Affairs school was built with much of the labor provided by the men of the U.S. 10th Cavalry stationed at Fort Washakie.
The school was quickly nicknamed “Gravy High” by the Shoshone people since it provided regular meals at the school’s mess hall.
In contrast to Rev. Robert’s gentle instruction, Gravy High could be a sometimes-brutal existence for the children who attended.
Drills akin to those done by the soldiers at the fort and beatings for speaking the Shoshone language were a daily occurrence.
It was in this period that the phrase “Kill the Indian, save the man” became a regular part of the attempted assimilation of Native people into mainstream American society.
Soon, schools for homesteaders began to pop up across the vastness of Fremont County.
A look at the districts that existed in 1918 is a trip down the history of Fremont County.
Lander had the first Fremont County School District, that’s why Lander Valley High School, formerly Fremont County Vocational High School and Lander High School before that, has always been #1. Lander remains Fremont County School District #1.
Founded in 1892, the Lander district was quickly followed by District #7 at Atlantic City, District 14 at Depass, a mining town at the foot of Copper Mountain above Shoshoni and Lysite and District 20 at Lost Cabin.
District 20 held its own against consolidation before finally losing the fight in the legislature and merging with Shoshoni.
Shoshoni, School District 24 is the second oldest district after Lander, created in 1906 just after the town was incorporated with the arrival of the railroad.
School districts lined the path of the Lander Road from Rawlins to Ft. Washakie beginning in 1878 and ending in 1906.
Lower Sweetwater, District 9, would eventually become Jeffrey City and then vanish into the sagebrush, consolidating with Lander.
Hailley and Dallas had small local districts to educate the children of Eli Signor, John Myers, the McKinney family, and John Carmody, all ranchers and businessmen along the Sweetwater River, Beaver Creek, and Spring Creek.
On the other side of the Wind River Range, District 22 formed in Cora, District 23 in Boulder, and District 12 in Pinedale.
They’re all part of Sublette County School District #1 today.
Dubois is now District 2, formerly District 13, just after the town was incorporated and no longer called Never Sweat. District 2 was available when Milford consolidated with Lander.
Teams from Pilot Butte, District 26 battled for two generations with District 32 at Pavillion before the Morton Broncs and Pavillion Panthers were lost to consolidation and became Wind River, District 6 in 1969.
District 6 was once at the mouth of Sink’s Canyon just west of Lander. The school was called Borner’s Garden School. It was built around 1881 as a private school for the children of homesteaders and power plant operators on the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie. It now resides on the grounds of the Pioneer Museum in Lander.
The government school at Ft. Washakie became District 21.
District 14, the third largest in Fremont County after Riverton and Lander, was once in the forgotten mining town of Depass, 60 miles across the valley of the Wind River.
Wyoming Indian, District 14, began with the Mill Creek School and grew into three separate campuses on Blue Sky Highway for the elementary, middle, and high schools.
Wyoming Indian High School’s impressive campus began in the early 1970s in buildings at St. Michael’s Mission, two miles to the south at the intersection of Blue Sky Highway and Ethete Road.
Recess at rural, one-room schools – h/t Wyoming State Archives
It’s easy to forget that Fremont County once extended into the southern Big Horn Basin.
Fremont County School District 16 in Thermopolis became responsible for the first school on the north side of Owl Creek Mountains in Fremont County in 1906 at the Moon School on Grass Creek. The school closed in 1918.
The Moon School began life as a dugout in the rocks with its walls lined by muslin.
Cottonwood School was another early elementary school near Thermopolis, which opened in 1909.
Near the town of Embar, the families attending Cottonwood School pooled their funds to build a school for $200.
The colorful town of Deranch, noted for its residents’ friendly relations with Butch Cassidy and other members of the Wild Bunch, had to have a school for their children.
In 1906, at the Hold Ranch, Miss Media Basom taught a summer school session in July and August in a storeroom at the ranch.
The Hot Springs County Museum related a story that Miss Basom recalled.
“Her fondest memory of that summer was of a little freckled-faced boy who had a Rhode Island Red rooster that came to school with him. The rooster would travel around the building, and when he discovered the window, he’d stand and peck on the pane to attract the boy’s attention. Not able to stand the noise any longer, the little boy called out loud, “Go away, damn you. I can’t learn anything in here, neither can you!”
In a reverse to most schools, the school at Holt held sessions in the Summer Months. The snow at Holt was too deep in the winter, and travel was unsafe for the children.
A permanent school was built by Hot Springs School District #1 in 1913. A second school came in 1931, but the copper bust was gone, the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad was running up the Wind River Canyon regularly and the new highway, completed in 1924 ended the need for travelers to take Birdseye Pass.
The school closed forever in 1937.
Anderson School was opened in 1896, in a log cabin. As was common with early schools, it was moved when the children of local ranchers “aged out,” and other younger children at neighboring ranches needed a school.
The Hot Springs County Museum related the story of Miss Cochran.
“Miss Cochran had a passion for music, she held a box supper to raise money for a second-hand organ, which increased the pupils love and appreciation for music. The school closed in 1910.”
Old Town, now known as East Thermopolis. It was open for just a single term in 1896 and early 1897.
A student, Herman Johnson, recited the entire Declaration of Independence on the day the school closed. It was claimed that the entire town soon came to listen to Herman.
Embar was a mining town with ties to Dubois, Burris, Crowheart, Ft. Washakie and Thermopolis. Among the rural schools once part of Fremont County, it had the longest tenure, opening on the North Fork of Owl Creek in 1906. It closed in 1960.
Hudson, Jeffrey City, Hailey, Milford, South Pass City, Atlantic City, Lower Sweetwater, District #8 in Lyons Valley, Dallas, Big Sandy, Baldwin Creek, New Fork, Liams, Upper North Fork, Madison Creek, Borner’s Garden and S.F. McCully are all part of District #1 today.
Lysite, Lost Cabin, and Depass are all within Fremont 24 in Shoshoni.
The Delfelder School, founded in 1924 by Jacob Delfelder, was regarded as one of the best schools in Wyoming until it closed and consolidated with Riverton.
Circle, Horse Creek, and Elkhorn are all part of the modern District #2 in Dubois. Crowheart, Burris, and Pilot Butte joined Pavillion and Morton at District 6, Wind River. 
It’s no coincidence that once these small districts closed, so did the communities that supported them.
A school, especially in a rural setting such as Wyoming, is the lifeblood of a community. Lose the school and lose the anchor of the local community.