A&M College Consolidated Rural School

The plaque says the school opened in 1920 with 304 students. Getting there took a vote. Rural Aid Law money depended on residents of all four districts approving a fifty-cent tax, and they did on May 24, 1920. Classes met in Guion Hall while a new building went up, with tables and chairs built in the college's mechanical engineering shops. Pupils could use campus facilities, including the zoo and the textile plant. When the school left campus, outlying residents bought and donated about fifteen acres, the Holick property, as a foundation for the new district.

What the plaque says

A&M College Consolidated Rural School The state of Texas granted a charter for an independent school district to encompass the Texas A&M College campus in 1909. Because there was not a sufficient number of students in the district to support a school, A&M president William Bizzell and professor Martin Hayes, head of the department of vocational teaching, persuaded the leaders of three surrounding common school districts to send their students to a new school to be located on the college campus. The new school opened in 1920 with 304 students. It was supported by A&M college with funding for buildings, teacher salaries, furniture, and equipment. It became a model for rural schools in the area, and by 1928 the surrounding school districts officially dissolved and merged with A&M College Consolidated Independent School District. By 1938 the school facilities had become overcrowded. Because the college was not able to increase its contributions to the institution, the school moved off of the A&M campus in 1940. With the move came the genesis of the College Station Independent School District. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 2.0 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 19 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 20 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• African American Education in College Station — 0.9 mi
• Shiloh Community — 1.2 mi
• Early Texas A&M Campus Housing — 1.8 mi
• Texas A&M Corps of Cadets — 1.8 mi