The Old La Grange Schoolhouse, built circa 1875, replaced the Branch District School, which had been built of rough lumber in 1855. Typical of the era, it is a one-room building with handmade furnishings, a porch, and a bell tower. C. C. Wright, a native of Iowa, came here and began teaching about 1866, then became a notable self-taught lawyer, served as District Attorney of Stanislaus County from 1876 to 1879, was elected to the State Assembly in 1886, and on January 11, 1887 introduced a bill to create irrigation districts. Governor Washington Bartlett signed the Wright California Irrigation Act into law on March 7, 1887, and the Wright Act would forever change how the county’s water demands were distributed. Legend holds that Bret Harte taught school here on his journey to the Sierra Gold Fields. More than a dozen small schools were later built in the county east of Waterford, including Lafayette, Hardscrabble, Tilden, Roberts Ferry, Horr, Hemitage, Live Oak, Rowe, Robinson, and Dry Creek, but most are now just a memory. Across from the school stands St. Louis Catholic Church, built in 1854 as the first church of any denomination in the county and one of the first, excluding missions, in the state, with 160 known burials in its cemetery.