By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

As you crest over a small hill on south U.S. Highway 283 in Trego County, a small limestone building pops out of a wild sea of golden grass and auburn milo.

For years the one-room structure known as the Wilcox School was left to decay and was overrun by rodents and spiders.

But with the help of some dedicated history lovers and a donation of the building by the Harm Schneider family, Wilcox School has been restored. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in May 2006. The building was dedicated Sunday to Harm Schneider’s memory.

The school was built of Niobrara limestone, quarried on the banks of the Smoky Hill River, in 1886 and was used as a school until 1949.

The stone for the building was likely quarried by hand and moved to the building site by horse-drawn wagon. A stone with the original construction date is still a part of the building, although it is mostly obscured today by an entrance that was added to the building a later date.

Also still remaining is more than a century of student graffiti. Students carved their initials or names along with dates into the relatively soft limestone along the front entrance and portions of the outside walls.

The school was named for the Wilcox family, whose farm was the closest to the school. The school had no running water, so water had to be brought in by students from the nearby farm every day that school was in session.

Raymond Mai, 94, attended Wilcox school through the eighth-grade when he had to leave school to go to work. He said school lessons stuck to the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.

He remembered playing baseball and a game called handy over. In handy over, a child would throw a ball over the school house. They would run to the other side of the school and tag someone from the opposite team. The tagged person had to join the taggers team.

When Mai was asked about rules in the one-room school house, he laughed.

“You better behave, or you’ll get it when you get home,” he said.

Mai lived on a farm two and half miles south of the school along the Smoky Hill River. He and his 12 siblings did farm chores in the morning before school, such as milking cows and feeding chickens, so they sometimes got a ride to school. However, they walked home in the afternoon.

Mai, who has lived in Trego County all of life, said he was pleased to see the school restored.

“It really makes me feel good,” he said,” because it is being taken care of after all this while.”

In addition to being used as a school, the Wilcox building was used as a community center where church services were conducted as well as literary programs and quilting bees. It was a voting location and draft registration site.  

During World War II, families at the school made mattresses for rural families out of surplus cotton donated by the federal government.

Vernon Schneider’s father bought and owned the land on which the Wilcox School now stands. His family donated the building to the Smoky Valley Scenic Byway Committee, which cleared the way for it to be restored. Four generations of the Schneider family were present at a dedication ceremony on Sunday.

Vernon said he remembers going to Sunday school in the Wilcox school between the ages of about 5 to 7 during the mid-1940s. He said even then the building was starting to show its age.

He said seeing the building dedicated Sunday was a great honor for him and his family.

In 1965 the Hi-Plains Gravel Grinders Motorcycle Club purchased the building for their club house. After the Gravel Grinders moved out, the school house sat in disrepair for several decades until the Smoky Valley Scenic Byway Committee began their efforts to preserve the school. 

Although the Smoky Valley Scenic Byway was designated 15 years, it was never dedicated. Cathy Albert, director of WaKeeney Travel & Tourism and Smoky Valley Scenic Byway, took a moment during the school dedication to honor the byway.

The byway makes a 60-mile U-shape. Going west it goes from Ogallah south on U.S. Highway 147 to Brownell and then west on U.S. 4 to Ransom and north on U.S. 283 to WaKeeney. The Wilcox school is 15 miles south of WaKeeney on U.S. 283. This historic Zion Lutheran Church and cemetery and byway marker can also be found on the U.S. 283 stretch of the byway.

The Butterfield Overland Despatch, which was established in 1865, crosses the byway in two locations. One of those crossings is marked with a limestone marker near Cedar Bluff Reservoir. The trail from Fort Leavenworth to Denver was the shortest, but was also considered the most dangerous because it crossed Native American hunting grounds.

During the spring through the early fall, the U.S. 283 section of the byway is a spectacular location to view native Kansas wildflowers. Volunteers reseeded the byway with native plants when U.S. 283 was reconstructed in the early 2000s.

Interpretive panels in the windows of the school discuss the school’s history as well as aspects of the flora and fauna along the byway. One window was left open so people could look inside the building, which has not been restored. It was the hope that if people could see there was nothing of value in the historic school, this would deter break-ins and vandals.

The restoration of the school was made possible by grants the byway committee received from the Heritage Trust Fund Grants through the Kansas Historical Society. The first grant was received in 2011 to restore the stonework and the roof. Metzker Restoration of Ness City reset the foundation and replaced some of the damaged stones, repaired the brick chimney and put a new roof on the school.

The second grant, which was received in 2015, was used to restore the windows, door, fascia, and soffit. Schamber Historic Preservation LLC of Damar built new windows and replaced the front door, fascia, and soffit earlier this year.

Len Schamber, preservationist, said Wilcox school was very dingy and dark when he and his brother began work on the building.

“All I saw was a dream,” he said. “All I saw was something beautiful in the end.”

He said he hoped the building interior could be restored to the point the building could be used at least occasionally by local community groups so the building would not fall into disrepair again.

“Don’t let it die, folks. Don’t let it die,” he said. “It is a beautiful thing, and it’s wow, 1886. That’s pretty awesome — been here, still here. Thank you for letting us be a part of it.”

Corrected 6:06 p.m. Friday Nov. 2, 2108:A former student of Wilcox school came forward showing historical documents that indicated the school was open until 1949 instead of the date previously listed in this story. The Wilcox school became a part of the District 14 at the end of 1947 school year, but remained open until the conclusion of the spring 1949 term.