Cashion School

Settlement here began about 1897, when Hi Willis bought land. Area farmers held informal church services until a Baptist church was organized in 1913, and they dedicated a building in 1918, the year oil arrived; one producing well stood on the church property. The Friberg school also consolidated with Cashion in the 1920s, and the high school grew from three years to four. By the early 1940s Cashion's school had consolidated with Burkburnett. The Handbook of Texas found no population figures for Cashion from the 1940s through the 1990s, but by 2000 it had incorporated and reported 550 residents.

What the plaque says

In 1902 Wichita County built a one-room schoolhouse here on land donated by H. F. Knippenberg. The school, named for County Commissioner T. J. Cashion, opened with one teacher, Mrs. Lou (White) Dodson, and 12 students. The original school building was destroyed by fire in 1915 and replaced with a new structure in 1916. Cashion's student enrollment increased significantly as a result of large numbers of people moving to this area following the discovery of oil in nearby Burkburnett in 1918. The school was expanded in 1923 and in 1924 E. F. Gaston donated 3 adjoining acres to the school. A brick high school and gymnasium were built in front of the existing schoolhouse in 1926. The nearby Cooper and Bacon Switch schools merged with Cashion School in 1926-27 and in the 1930-31 school year Cashion reached its highest recorded student enrollment of 286. During this time Cashion School buildings also served the community as a site for social, recreational and political activities. By the mid-1930s nearby oil production dropped dramatically and the community as well as Cashion School declined. The high school closed in 1936 and the elementary school in 1943. The school buildings were auctioned in 1945 and moved off this site. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 8.4 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 8.8 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 20 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 24 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Site of Friberg School — 4.3 mi
• Samuel Burk Burnett — 4.7 mi
• John Gerham Hardin — 4.7 mi
• Sheppard Air Force Base — 4.9 mi