Now that school is back in session for most kids in South Dakota, it’s interesting to take a look back at what that used to look like a century ago. Schools of today are very different from then, having changed from one room schoolhouses out in the farmland for a handful of rural children to more centralized schools that serve hundreds of students from the surrounding areas every year.
Wind the clock back to a hundred years ago and see the difference from then to now:
- Two-story public school in Estelline, South Dakota, 1913
photolibrarian/Flickr
- Lonely rural school out in Faulk County, South Dakota, 1942
John Vachon/yale.edu
- An empty schoolhouse that once had students learning within the walls, Minnehaha, South Dakota
jerry7171/Flickr
- Larger school and dormitory located in Springfield, South Dakota, 1918
NARA/Wikimedia
- Now abandoned, this one room school house is still standing near Eureka, South Dakota.
Jimmy Emerson/Flickr
- A native to the area painting a mural in a school in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, 1940
John Vachon/yale.edu
- Perched on a hill is this old school in Red Elm, South Dakota
Jimmy Emerson/Flickr
Things have certainly changed since then, but it is interesting to see that some of these pieces of history are still standing today, even if they are more or less abandoned now. Luckily, some schoolhouses have been preserved in historical towns in South Dakota to keep their history alive. Some of these were still being used well into the mid 1900s, so they are not all that far back when you think about it. What is your earliest memory of school?
photolibrarian/Flickr
John Vachon/yale.edu
jerry7171/Flickr
NARA/Wikimedia
Jimmy Emerson/Flickr
If you’re interested in taking a journey back in time into other aspects of life in South Dakota, check out these houses from the 1930s. They show what it was really like to live in this state back then and it’s fascinating.
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