Educating Riggins' Children

Riggins' early schools began in 1894 with a small log cabin on a flat near the river in north Riggins, where fourteen students in grades one through eight studied for a few years before the school moved to a small building near Flume Gulch at the south end of town. In 1904 classes moved back into town to a building on the north corner of Ace’s Place that later became a private residence. In 1905 Charlie Clay donated land south of Salmon Street for a one-room lumber schoolhouse that also served as the community meeting place, hosting dances and sporting activities on weekends after desks were moved outside, while water hauled from the irrigation ditch or river was stored in buckets on benches. In 1921 more land was bought there and a new two-room school was built with a wide entrance, spacious cloakrooms, and movable divisions that allowed continued community events. Students had no playground equipment, but a large boulder on the property became a natural play area where boys climbed and jumped and played hide and seek, while girls lunched in the shade of a bush growing from a crack in the rock and made hollyhock dolls. After the Pollock and Riggins school districts consolidated as Common School District #31, a new high school was built in 1940 for both communities, with Riggins students helping construct the building and install hardwood floors in nearby Clay’s Hall for basketball games and boxing smokers that raised funds for the school. The first high school graduation there took place in the spring of 1941 with seven students, and the Old School remained a high school until a new facility was built in 1958, after which it was used for elementary grades, kindergarten, and the After School Kids Program.

Riggins, Idaho · United States