Cowles Consolidated School

Cowles took its name from W. D. Cowles, general freight agent of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, when the line came through and the town was platted in 1878. The schoolhouse was built for a town near its height: the census counted 220 people in 1920, the year of the first twelfth-grade class, and 224 in 1930. By 1950 there were 130. The school closed in 1959, the 1960 census found 55, and the post office closed that year. In 2020 Cowles had 21 residents.

What the plaque says

Cowles Consolidated School 1913-1959 The village of Cowles, founded in 1878 and incorporated in 1912, in 1913 approved a bond issue of $14,000 to construct a three-story brick schoolhouse on this site. It was completed in 1915. Classes were taught there to the eleventh grade level. The first twelfth grade class was graduated in 1920, when District 73 became Cowles Consolidated School, District K. Thereafter twelve grades were taught until the school was closed in 1959. Cowles Alumni & Community Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Willa Cather Center — 6.8 mi
  The restored Moon Block on Red Cloud's Webster Street, home of the Willa Cather Foundation, with the town she grew up in and wrote about laid out around it.
• Willa Cather Memorial Prairie — 12 mi
  Six hundred and twelve acres of never-plowed mixed-grass prairie south of Red Cloud, once Kitkehahki Pawnee country, named for the writer who said the grass was the country.

More markers nearby

• Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 1904-1952 — 4.6 mi
• Grace Episcopal Church — 6.8 mi
• Webster County, 1871-1971 — 6.8 mi
• Red Cloud, 1871-1971 — 6.9 mi