Rural schools in Waupaca County, primarily one-room frame structures, date from the 1850s, and the last of the nearly 130 that once served the rural population closed in 1969. Because this area was frontier country in the 1850s, about one-third of the nearly 30 school districts established in that decade were first held in private homes or log cabins. Wisconsin’s School Laws of 1848 authorized town boards to organize school districts within their townships, and an 1861 law created county superintendent oversight positions. Records indicate that the Ware School, established in 1850, was the county’s first rural school district and a joint district of Waupaca and Farmington townships; it was probably followed by Post Corners in Dayton and Oak Grove in Mukwa. The last rural districts were established in 1920: Langdok in Iola, Harrison Center in Harrison, and Lebanon, also called Maple Hill. Some published references recount an unconfirmed early rural school location east of Iola. The Twin Grove School, established in 1861, the Dow School, established in 1868, and the Fairchild School, established in 1871, stood along what is now State Highway 161 in Helvetia Township. Twin Grove and Dow closed in 1943, but Fairchild continued in use until 1965. Many rural schools closed in the 1930s and early 1940s when declining enrollment, sometimes into the single digits, made them inefficient to operate. In 1940, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction established a master plan requiring rural school districts to consolidate with adjoining rural districts or nearby city or village school districts if their assessed property valuations were less than $100,000. The last county-wide rural school eighth-grade graduation exercises were held in 1962. The final one-room schools to close were Sheridan in Farmington in 1967 and Knowledge Hill in Union in 1969. Waupaca County’s rural school districts were typically named for landowners who donated school sites or for the physical characteristics of the sites, with exceptions including Norske in Harrison, Little Mountain and State Road in Union, Bunker Hill in Waupaca, and Rainbow in Weyawega.