Sand Bank School traced its history to around 1800, when a first log school stood a few feet east of the Kaskaskia-Cahokia Trail on a sand hill serving settlers near Captain James Piggot's Fort Great Run settlement south of the schoolhouse near today's Carr Creek. After the Indian Treaty of 1795, Francis Ballew Piggot built a small log cabin with a fenced garden on this site and had her claim certified at the Cahokia Courthouse; after Captain Piggot died and Francis moved to St. Louis, that cabin likely became the first log school around 1800. The earliest located school records show Levi Piggot teaching there in 1816, and log schoolhouses on the site served local farm children for more than 100 years. Public funding for Illinois schools was enacted in 1855, and the school became Sand Bank District 2, one of eight public schools in Columbia Township. James McKee taught there in 1874 and left in 1876 for the new public school in Columbia. Monroe County records identify Nellie Weibel as the first woman public school teacher in the county, serving at Sand Bank School and later at Etter and Riverview schools before 1899. Maggie Urmey taught in 1899, Julia Divers Wilson taught from 1900 to 1912, and Lorenz Vogt, after earlier teaching at Schoemaker School and at Sand Bank in 1912, continued there until 1924. On July 15, 1902, under a new state law requiring districts to be numbered by county rather than township, Sand Bank District 2 was renumbered District 55, with a census of 44 children ages 6 to 21. Trustees John Gummersheimer, Michael Geyer, and Anton Vogt decided a new school was needed, bought additional land from Frank Hermann, and erected a one-room frame school in the fall of 1903 in front of the log schoolhouse. On May 11, 1904, the old log schoolhouse was sold at public sale to W. Phelps for $10, dismantled, and moved to the site of his store at the corner of Route 3 and Davis Street Ferry Road. After 1910, boys' and girls' cloak rooms were added to the front, and an east wall of windows was created to meet Illinois requirements for more natural light in rural schools. In 1916 Sand Bank School was one of 59 districts in Monroe County. Edith "Maude" Mehan began teaching there in 1924 and remained until the school closed in 1952. The Alderson family bought the building at auction and lived there until Forest Alderson died in 2002, after which it stood empty until Terry Schramm and Dennis Patton bought it in 2008. Restoration then began with volunteer help from Columbia High School students and local tradesmen, supported by the Sophia and Elmer Oerter Charitable Foundation and the Charles Todd Foundation. In 2010, the Sand Bank School Historical Society received the Illinois Governors Hometown Award for Outstanding Community Volunteerism, and in 2014 Joseph and Patricia Koppeis bought the property and allowed the society to manage the schoolhouse.