Daleview School in 1918 shortly after completion.

By Matthew Barnes

I wrote previously about the Centennial district which had great plans for education in their community, but was unable to accomplish these plans due to too low of a valuation. However, rural high schools did have their share of success stories. Such is the case with the Daleview C-3, which was created on March 18, 1916, and combined the districts of West Point, Mt. Salem, Spring Valley, Walkup’s Grove, and Littell. The first school board was made up of Wm. Bowness, Thomas Carter, Isaac Tyson, John McMahon, Henry Fries, and Virgil Hall. Unlike Centennial, Daleview was made up of five larger rural districts. Of the six consolidated districts formed, Daleview was the largest geographically and had the highest assessed valuation of any Atchison County district in the 1920s and early 1930s. In the fall of 1916, a high school was opened in the Walkup Grove Presbyterian Church with Ira Faunz serving as the first superintendent and principal. While the high school was not accredited at that time, it is credited as being the first rural high school in the county.

The district had several setbacks at its start. A fire destroyed the Walkup’s Grove Church, including all of the equipment currently owned by the district. An election had been held to build a modern brick high school on May 25, 1916, but failed to meet the supermajority by two votes. Another election was held a month later which passed the bond. The bond resulted in a tax increase of 65 cents per $100 valuation, Daleview’s total valuation was $581,000 at that time. The board hired Richard Schultz of Corning as the contractor and the ground was broken in October. Work on the building was slow; however, it was ready for the start of the 1919-1920 school year. The building housed two cloakrooms, a manual training room, an office, and a lunchroom in the basement, four classrooms, including a science laboratory on the second floor, and an auditorium on the third floor. The building was dedicated in November of that year. H.M. Patterson was hired as a superintendent in 1917 and two high school teachers were hired in 1919, the rural schools continued to educate grades 1-8. A teacherage was also built at some point.

Basketball and baseball were the only sports that Daleview competed in. Basketball started in 1921, and the green and white Daleview Eagles were well-known as formidable opponents having developed a rivalry with Irish Grove. Basketball games were held on an outside dirt court. Games were often times held in muddy conditions, and the Fairfax Forum once reported that the basketball was unrecognizable following a game as it was covered in mud.

The year 1922 saw a tax levy of 25 cents per $100 valuation proposed to the patrons of the district. The purpose of the levy was to fund construction of a crackerbox gymnasium with a balcony for seating on the north side of the building. The levy apparently failed and likely by a large margin as no other attempt was ever made.

A.H. Monford was hired as superintendent in 1921. At that time classes offered were four years of English, modern history, ancient history, English and American history, algebra, geometry, advanced arithmetic, physics, chemistry, basic science, agriculture, and sociology.  That same year the enrollment was 31 students in the high school and a total of 146 students in grades 1-12, roughly the same as the Fairfax R-3 district today. O.C. Williams was hired as superintendent in 1923 and would remain for the next 14 years. The Daleview Whirlwind, a school newspaper, was started in 1924 with Willard Hodgin as the first editor.

A peculiarity at Daleview was that boys and girls could not eat together. Upon leaving the lunch room in the basement, the girls would make their way to the auditorium on the third floor, while the boys would remain in the basement. The teachers would eat lunch over in the teachers’ home. During the late 1930s, the boys would go up to the third floor to round dance with the girls. A lookout was always appointed in case the students had to make a getaway. On one fateful day, the lookout yelled, “Mr. Williams is coming and he’s running!” The boys sprinted down those two flights of stairs and narrowly missed getting caught.

Daleview’s enrollment began to slowly fall during the depression, and the district dropped one of the high school teachers in 1937. At that time Ray Keever took the helm as superintendent. Daleview always had a winter play, and usually the auditorium was packed to the brim. Some of the plays included “Higbee of Harvard,” “Fixing it for Father,” “A Million Dollar Joke,” and “Romance in the Boarding House.” In 1939 Leroy Nelson of Browning, Missouri, was hired as superintendent and continued to serve until 1941 when he accepted the superintendent position at Barnard, Missouri.

After a long and difficult search, the school board hired H.H. Rosser as superintendent. Teachers were becoming more and more scarce to come by with WWII coupled with a slow decline in enrollment. Nevertheless, Daleview continued to serve as a first-class high school still maintaining the highest valuation of all of the consolidated districts, and fourth overall in the county. In 1944 it was decided that Daleview High School would close and students were sent to Fairfax.  Mr. Keever had resigned to assume the superintendency in Randolph, Iowa, and the board was unable to find a suitable replacement. The country schools continued to operate and the central Daleview school building was used for events and some specialty classes.

In 1951, Daleview was reorganized into the Fairfax R-3 School District and the rural schools were closed. Fairfax utilized the central Daleview building as an elementary school for the eastern half of the district, serving students from Mount Pleasant and Wolfe neighborhoods. High school students were transported to the central school. This was made possible by the “mud busses” employed by the Fairfax district. However, the enrollment remained low with 36 students attending the school in 1954. A new elementary school was constructed in Fairfax in 1957 making the Daleview building obsolete. The school was closed and the contents were sold at auction, and the building and grounds were sold to Lois and Wayman Park. Lois, who had taught the lower grades, accepted a job at Bellvue High school in Holt County. Over the years, the condition of the building deteriorated, and it was finally torn down in 1997.