by Liv Stecker
In 1902, the first school was built along Onion Creek. It was called the Lotze School and it was housed in a small log building. In 1908 a school board meeting about locations and districts actually came to blows when board members couldn't agree. The school was relocated several miles up Bodie Mountain Road and it was renamed the Wall School. Over the next decade, numerous schools around the area were built and then subsequently consolidated into larger districts in the town of Northport, the Marble Flats, and eventually, two small homestead districts combined in 1915 to create Onion Creek School.
Still in operation today, without a break in service, the schoolhouse was built in 1917 along with a teacher's cottage which provided housing for the resident teacher into the 1970s. It has since been retrofitted to be used as a preschool classroom. In 1981, the school built a new multi-use building, complete with a passive solar greenhouse and an open solarium-style mini amphitheater (lovingly known as "the pit”) at the center of the polygon shaped building that is used for student gatherings. Heavily influenced by the influx of hippy generation families that accumulated in the Onion Creek area in the 1970s, the building was designed to encourage community experienced based learning. At one time, green vining plants thrived in custom fabricated containers throughout the atrium, enhancing the open second story which now serves as a library and additional work space.
The greenhouse posed problems for the school district for heating in the winter, and when some of the glass panels cracked, a safety based grant from the state provided for a remodel that expanded the former greenhouse into a cafeteria and locker space. Most of the plants from the greenhouse inside the school were transplanted to the school garden which is still maintained by students and staff and provides fresh vegetables for the kitchen in the late spring and early fall. While many of the idealistic concepts from the 1970s are no longer functioning aspects of Onion Creek School, the die-hard spirit of individualism that has been characteristic of the area since the first settlers moved up Bodie Mountain is still a driving force.
Over time, the population of the Onion Creek area has grown and diminished. First with the commercial mining and logging interests, and later as families left urban areas and sought out a back-to-the-land lifestyle in northern Stevens County. For many decades, the Onion Creek School served Kindergarten through the 6th grade only. In the mid 1990s it was expanded to include middle school grades.
Currently the historic 1917 schoolhouse serves as the middle school, while the K-5th grades meet in the 1981 addition. Partitions have gone up between the once open classrooms in the round schoolhouse, as state standards for grade level requirements and testing processes have grown more demanding and allow for less distraction and flexibility in teaching.
In April, in preparation for the 100 year anniversary of the school, students put together a “museum” display. The theme “Peeling Back the Layers of Onion Creek” is revisited every three years as a period of time in the history of the community is investigated. In addition to special project focused on the centennial, the students were all assigned the task of creating their own “hippy home”, as if they had moved to Onion Creek in the 70s, exploring motivations for different and unorthodox styles of houses during the period. The 3D projects ranged from retrofitted school buses, to geodomes, to earth houses and even a whimsical tree house, many of which are replicated after actual homes in the area.
For the centennial, one of the projects that students in the middle school were assigned involved filing a claim for property in the Onion Creek Area according to the historical process. Students studied plot maps and chose a claim and filed all of the necessary paperwork, signing contracts for the required conditions of property claims at the turn of the century. Learning about the use of land, either along water, wooded, or for pasture gave the students a glimpse of the value system at Onion Creek in the early 1900s.
Other centennial projects included snapshots of the turn of the century lifestyle in transportation, entertainment, social life and religion; tracing family lines from the first settlers in the area; and recipes from the turn of the century homesteaders. Each student also created a display about their own family and how they came to Onion Creek.
In May, local author Jack Nisbet paid a visit to the school, facilitated through the Upper Columbia Children’s Forest, a project sponsored by the Colville National Forest. Nisbet gave the 4th-8th grade students a presentation about the Onion Creek area along the Columbia River around the time that explorer David Thompson made contact with the Native Americans, in the early 1800s. Discovering the types of canoes that local tribes built during this time, the students then followed Jack on a nature walk to locate the same tree varieties and other useable plants in the woods around the school. Nisbet painted a picture for the students that contrasted the wild plant life that Thompson encountered 200 years ago to the 100 year old cleared meadows, fruit trees and non-native plants that were introduced by the homesteaders. Glimpses of both historical environments are within a few steps of the old schoolhouse.
Onion Creek School is an icon of the true-grit determination of the earliest settlers in Stevens County and the radical individualism that defines our area. It combines realism of harsh, off-the-grid living with the idealism of the 70s. The school has a long history of producing artists and free spirits that move on to high school in other locations and bring a sense of community and vision with them. The Onion Creek School community is the picture of cultural and technological adaptability, allowing changes over time to bend and mold their mission throughout a century of history.
Looking Back at Onion Creek School
We’ve been studying local history with our ‘Peeling Back the Layers of Onion Creek’ unit. Students have looked back on the consolidation of 5 local schools to 1, and have researched many of the early Onion Creek families. Thank you to those of you who were able to visit our Museum on April 30th, and for those of you who missed it, here is a taste of some of the work which will be on display during our 100 year celebration on June 27th, 2015….
Walter Jacob William Lotze was born in Stevens County in 1888. The Lotze family was one of the earliest homesteader families in Onion Creek. Walter was a contractor and was never paid cash for his occupation. At one time he worked at a smelter. Life was hard for the early settlers because the technology they had to work the land and build things would seem primitive to us today.
-David
Claude Busby was born in Montana in 1890. He moved his family, including a 4 year old daughter named Patricia, to Onion Creek when he was a young man. He had multiple occupations, including farming, carpentry, and mining. He loved to dance at parties up Bodie Mountain. Claude was a veteran of World War I, but he survived to return to his family and home in Onion Creek.
-Jakob
The Butorac family was from Croatia and moved to Onion Creek in 1907. They had seven children, with four of them growing up to be teachers, while one became an engineer and one became a nurse. The Butorac father could do arithmetic in his head faster than most people could write down the problem. He tried to share this talent with his family by applying math to everyday events, like seeing fractions in a pie cut into pieces. The mother was vegetable and flower gardener and often produced and canned over 1,000 quarts of vegetables, fruits, pickles, jelly, jam and meats.
-Nicole
Ernst Lotze was born in 1855 in Germany and moved to Onion Creek, establishing a homestead in 1894. He and his wife Marie had 12 children. They survived by growing crops, picking wild berries, fishing in the creek and the Columbia and hunting deer and smaller game. Ernst occasionally had disputes with neighbors and shot and killed a man in on his property in 1895. In 1902 Ernst was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Ernst’s sons and wife continued to live in Onion Creek on their homestead.
-Cody
Iver T. Sundheim was born in 1875 in Norway. He and his wife Margit arrived in Onion Creek in 1896 and established a homestead. They had 19 family members living in their home. He was a farmer and grew wheat and alfalfa. For entertainment, the family would go to the Bodie Mountain dances, renowned for the good music, good times and fights.
-Tristan
Nicholas Bolick was born in Austria and came to Onion Creek with his parents at age 14. Later he married Annie Vocobrolic. In 1919 he had a successful deer hunting party in Onion Creek. He rode horses and in the winter his horses could carry people in sleds. Nicholas owned a farm with his wife and they cultivated a garden with potato crops, and raised chickens, pigs, and rabbits. Nicholas Bolick died on April 29, 1950.
-Lindsey
Onion Creek’s Original Schoolhouses
Briggs Schoolhouse opened its doors to students in 1906. Briggs, a one room schoolhouse, was built by Mr. Erdman. Students had to carry buckets of water to the schoolhouse to meet their water requirements. Usual people that attended the school were the Flanik, Sundheim, Dromovich, Snyder and Erdman families. Students caught squirrels, frogs and snakes to scare teachers and fellow classmates. The first board members were Mrs. Erdman, Mr. Robinson and Mrs. Briggs. The first person to teach at Briggs was Louise Adams and the last teacher was Ellahanna.
-Jakob & David
Onion Creek Falls #127 (The “Elgie School”) was built in 1905. A nearby sawmill housed many of the families that attended the Elgie School. Some students had a long walk to school so they found shortcuts to make their walk easier. A few families lived above the school and could ride their sleds most of the way down during the winter months. The first school board members were Frank Clay, J.C. Johnson, and Dan Elgie. The first person to teach at Elgie School was James Norman. The last person to teach there was Hattie Gaines, from 1911-1912. Dan Elgie moved the local sawmill and the school transferred its students to Marble District #167.
-Nicole & Lindsey
Onion Creek School #30 was founded July 12th 1915. The Sundheims used their log puller to clear a nice sized area around the school for kids to play on. Across from the school was a teacher’s cottage. It was later moved onto school grounds and it is still being used today to teach preschool. It is lovingly referred to as the Cottage. Some of the first people to use the teacher’s cottage were Gazelle, Walston, and Georgia Brown. In 1917 the main schoolhouse was erected. It is a one room schoolhouse with a bell tower. The 1917 building is also still being used today to teach grades 6-8. With an influx of families moving to the area in the 1970’s the local community desired a new ‘modern’ school. In 1981 construction finished on a multi room building, including a kitchen and a greenhouse.
-Tristan
Onion Creek’s Wall School was located in a remote area up Bodie Mountain Rd. It was a one room schoolhouse built out of logs. The first board members were A. Roseberry, Earnest Lotze, Ola Johnson, and J.C. Johnson. The school’s first teacher was Mrs. Hanna and the last person to teach at Wall School was Mrs. Murphy. The school held many dances, parties and community gatherings outside of regular school hours. Some of the schools past students remembered it having a very precarious road up the mountain. Harry Blacken remembers the road as being, “nothing but a ledge cut into the side of the mountain.”
-Cody
A FINE PUBLICATION BROUGHT TO YOU BY YOUR LOCAL YOUNG ONES!
