McDonald Commentary: Historic Jackson Prairie School Renovated by Homeowners

In the late 19th century, the children of early pioneers learned to read and write in a one-room log cabin north of the home of Lewis County’s earliest American settler — John R. Jackson.

Jackson Prairie School formed as  District 30 in 1891, and changed to District 142 in 1919 after a failed attempt to consolidate five smaller districts. Workers replaced the original cabin in 1906, expanded to two rooms in 1913, and moved the building from the east side of Jackson Highway to the west in 1920. The property included playground equipment and a play shed, or gymnasium.

For five decades, the school served students in two rooms — first- through fourth-graders in one, fifth- through eighth-graders in the other. Student surnames included Hoerling, Guenther, Quigley, Gilk and Kennedys.

One alumnus, Harold West, learned to play golf at a course across from the school. After graduating from Onalaska High School, he became a golf pro and president of the Oregon Professional Golfers’ Association.

In 1955, two instructors taught 40 students. Five years later, enrollment reached its peak of 48 because of Mayfield Dam construction on the Cowlitz River, according to The Daily Chronicle, and teachers Hilda Morrell and Laura Hovies ordered new desks.

In July 1961, when Evaline was the county’s only other two-room school, workers at Jackson Prairie constructed a new chimney, rebuilt the back porch, reroofed, and erected a new bell tower atop the building.

The district also claimed the state’s longest-serving school board member in 1962, when The Daily Chronicle featured Henry Lucas, a farmer born in June 1879 near Mary’s Corner who became a Jackson Prairie School director in 1905 and served more than 57 years.

In the early 1960s, a state law required districts without high schools to help those with high schools pay for building improvements. Sixteen Jackson Prairie students attended high school in Chehalis in 1964, six went to Napavine, and one to Toledo.

Twice Jackson Prairie District voters rejected ballot measures to pay $9,661 toward the $666,249 W.F. West High School building project. That left annexation into a larger district as their only option.

Residents then had to decide which district to join. In October 1962, voters rejected the first option, a merger with Winlock, and eventually agreed to join Napavine School District.

In late March 1964, two teachers — Mildred B. White and Ora C. Martin— packed up books and supplies. Then Jackson Prairie’s 26 students boarded a bus for Napavine.

School officials in Napavine eventually sold the schoolhouse assessed at $7,000 to Ed and Grace Polacek of Chehalis, who lived there in the mid-1970s.

Lou and Linda Oliver later bought the place and landscaped with grape arbor, wisteria arbor, three fish ponds, a waterwheel, 582 daffodils, rhododendrons and other flowering plants. Lou Oliver, manager of the nearby Lewis and Clark State Park, kept a guest book signed by former students who visited.

After his wife died in July 2013, Oliver sold the property for $159,900 in 2016 to Roger and Roberta Ramsey Wiard.

“It was just like a two-acre greenhouse,” Roberta Wiard said. The Wiards had built a three-bedroom log house on eight acres on Ceres Hill Road near Adna. They lived there 17 years but wanted to move closer to Chehalis.

They hired two men who remodeled the school, retaining its basic structure and 11½-foot ceilings. They refinished the hardwood floors, modernized the bathroom, and installed new windows, floor laminate, and kitchen cabinets. They added insulation, replaced dark brown trim with white paint, and decorated the two small bedrooms. The main room still holds the large Franklin stove.

Beams brace the old gymnasium’s walls to keep them from collapsing. The original 400-pound bell, which was sold in 1965 and purchased by the Olivers in 1991, sits in an enclosure in the yard because the tower has rotted completely.

Windows line a teacher’s alcove where a 20-year-old fuchsia Christmas cactus flourishes along with pink and white orchids. The cactus was a gift from Roberta’s daughter after a severe car accident on Highway 6 in October 1999 left her with a concussion, internal bleeding, four broken ribs, a broken clavicle, bruised liver, and contusions on her right arm and leg. She picked glass shards from her head for four years.

Roberta, who worked 25 years for Katie’s Candies and a decade at Woodland Village, and Roger, a Centralia School District custodian for eight years, met at the Winlock Seventh-day Adventist Church and married in October 1995. Between them, they have six children, a dozen grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren.

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.