Gate Club Volunteers Work to Preserve School

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The Gate City Community Club is set to host an open house plant sale and work party at the historic schoolhouse located in at the convergence of the Black River and the Capitol Forest foothills.

Between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Sunday, the school grounds will be open to visitors in search of spring seedlings for their gardens or those who may just be looking for a walk down memory lane.

Donna Smith, president of the Gate City Community Club, explained that it’s an expensive task to keep the old school in tip top shape. The property taxes don’t make things any easier.

For about three decades, the Gate Homemakers Club would hold quilting parties and then raffle off the finished products in order to pay for the building and keep the historic location in the public domain. That work came to a halt in 1999 though, and community members have been forced to find other ways to pay for maintenance.

“This is our first official sale we’ve done for plants since this board has taken over,” said Smith. She noted that the current community board has been together since about 2005, when there was serious discussion of selling the schoolhouse to a private owner. She emphasized that “every dime that we bring in” goes right back to the Gate school grounds.

Another means of funding for the schoolhouse are memberships to the Gate City Community Club. Those memberships are priced at varying levels with the upper echelon designated as a centennial membership. The schoolhouse was erected in 1910, and since it is the 106th anniversary of the schoolhouse existence, the cost of a centennial memberships this year is $106. In addition to their premium membership status, centennial sponsors are able to reserve the schoolhouse for private events such as parties, weddings and baby showers.

In its heyday between about 1880 and 1920, Gate was an important crossroads for train travelers headed to the beach or to and from Olympia. The town boasted two schools back then. The school that’s still standing was for the younger kids while a two-story building across the tracks, known as the Big School, was appropriately reserved for the bigger kids. The Big School has since burned down and vanished from the scene. An impressive array of local coffee shops, supply stores, a dance hall and at least one church have all disappeared from the scene in one manner or another over the years.

“They call Gate a ghost town because all of the original buildings are now gone,” explained Smith.

Through the efforts of the Gate City Community Club, the hope is that at least one historic building, the Gate City Schoolhouse, will remain standing. 



“Thanks to the efforts of the Gate City Homemakers and the Gate City Community Board they’ve been able to keep it dry and upright,” said an appreciative Smith.

Recent efforts to restore the building have included refinishing the original hardwood floor, replacing the square tile ceiling with vaulted wood and replacing the off-putting hum of fluorescent lights in the classroom with more traditional ballasts that put off an inviting glow.

The old school bell still works, and a slight tug on a rope inside the kitchen area sends angelic tones wafting across the bucolic streets of historic Gate.

Other events planned for the historic schoolhouse this year include a chili cook-off in July and a yard and craft sale in August. The building is also used intermittently by Boy Scouts troops and for wedding and baby showers as well as holiday parties, and many other special occasions that pop up throughout the year. 

“So the building is used by the community a lot,” said Smith. “That’s what it’s here for.”

In addition to the plant sale and open house on Sunday, the Gate City Community Club is hoping that folks will stick around to help spruce up the grounds a bit. What that work will entail is left entirely up to the willing though.

“The board is such that if people want to do something we let them, and ask how can we help?,” explained Smith.

The community group holds their board meetings on the second Sunday of every month with a follow up potluck that typically begins around 6:30 p.m. The historic Gate schoolhouse is located at 16925 Moon Road SW, Rochester.