Schoolhouse (Visitor Contact Station)

Schoolhouse after NPS restoration, 2018.

Quick Facts

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Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

The isolation of island life posed a problem for families of the full-time workers when school time came. So a school was created in one of the small, older buildings on the ranch, possibly the same one that had served as a school during the More period on the island. However, E. K. Smith, former ranch employee who was born on the island, believed that his father, former ranch foreman C.W. Smith, and a Santa Barbara carpenter converted a small generator building into the school in the early 1920s.

Whatever the origin of the schoolhouse, a number of teachers were hired from Los Angeles, lived in their own room in the bunkhouse, and held classes for grades one through nine in the small one-room building.

During the 1920s and early 1930s, eight to ten children attended the school, including E. K. According to Woolley, "it was a little room . . . with a bunch of old desks, inkwells and all that. . . . Dad had a teacher for the youngsters of the workers there, like the Smiths and the Lopezes and the Gomezes . . . it was just a standard school, but it was one gal taking care of all of ‘em!"

Smith remembered it as "just like a regular school:"

"We would go to school at 8 o'clock, and we had a recess and then went home at 3:00 or 3:30. At recess we'd play baseball in the corrals and stuff. We were assigned desks. They were the kind that we would just shove all our books in from the back end. My dad made the desks when he made the school. They taught us everything: penmanship, typing-they had two typewriters-and all the regular stuff: math, spelling, geography and history."

The school closed around 1932 when many of the students reached high school age. E. K. Smith recalled the difficult transition from the small island school to a big Santa Barbara High School: "We were the last graduating class-1932. After that, they sent us over to the mainland for high school. It was hard at first. Those mainland kids gave me a rough time. Laughing at me, you know, because I was island-born. It took a long time to get used to that life."

After the school was discontinued, it was used for guest quarters and to house ranch workers. A room was added in the early 1960s to make a more comfortable home. It was occupied by cowboys with spouses until 1999.

By 2017, the building was restored to its original schoolhouse state, a small ranch exhibit was added inside, and it was opened to the public.

For more detailed historical information and citations, please refer to the Historic Resource Study: Island Legacies - A History of the Islands within Channel Islands National Park