The Little Blue School, Remembering Education in Sheridan County in 1902

Eva McCrary with students inside the Little Blue School

The Little Blue School House in Ranchester gives students a look at what it was like to go to school in the early days of Sheridan County.

According to the book, “The Little Blue School,” written by Frances Stall Husdale and Audrey M. Kleinsasser, with Dorothy Gibb and illustrated by Ed Murphy, the school was built in 1902. The book is available at the Tongue River Branch Library.

Families living on the upper part of Five Mile Flat were some distance from the Ohlman School, and it was a long ride for the youngsters on horseback. The families decided to built a school closer to where they lived.

The school operated until 1949. In 1988, the Little Blue School, although no longer used, did not collapse into a pile of dusty boards, and it was one of only two or three one-room school in Sheridan County that was still standing.

Several people in the Parkman-Dayton-Ranchester area became interested in moving the school and restoring it in the period. The school was moved and set up on the grounds of the Tongue River Elementary school in Ranchester.

In 1990, the restored Little Blue School was dedicated as an official Wyoming Centennial Project. It was presented to the School District #1 School Board and is recognized as a symbol of living history serving to preserve the legacy of the one-room rural schools which played a part in Wyoming’s history and shows the commitment early Wyoming settlers had to educating their children.

Today, the Little Blue School sits near the Ranchester Community Center. One day each spring second grade teachers Eva McCrary and Andrea Sears, bring their students from Tongue River Elementary School to hold classes in the old schoolhouse. “We let them walk here and tell them about how they would have had to walk or ride a horse to school.” McCrary said. “We talk about the history of the school as well.”

She added that the kids love it, it is a field trip they always remember. She said they even have a dunce cap that the kids sometimes wear and sit in the corner, which was a punishment for unruly students in the 1900s.

The students pack a lunch and stay most of the day. Mike Board, a retired Physical Education teacher who taught at Tongue River Elementary, teaches them old fashioned PE games.

He talked about some of the games that students used to play. “We will do some potato sack relays, Annie, Annie Over which is a tag game that involves throwing the ball over the Little Blue School; London Bridge, Kick the Can, and other games.”

Inside of the school is set up like it would have been in 1902. There is a chalk board, old readers, a wood stove for heat, pictures of Washington and Lincoln, a piano, and a water jug, tin cups, and everything the students would need to learn in the early days of Sheridan County.

Although McCrary only brought the second-grade class, most of the one-room schools had students from first grade through eighth grade, with one teacher for all the grades, and the older students helping the younger ones. In the one-room Slack School near Parkman, one teacher has five students, from kindergarten through fourth grade.

The Little Blue School in Ranchester, a look back in time and letting students experience how their grandparents may have learned and what games they might have played in the one-room schools in Wyoming.