First Permanent Schoolhouse in Dakota Territory

Vermillion's children were taught in borrowed rooms for four years before the soldiers built them a school. Classes met first above James McHenry's store, then from 1860 in the Presbyterian church until it was taken down in 1862 for the stockade, then in houses. The log schoolhouse of the winter of 1864-65 stood on the ravine road near Nelson Miner's Saint Nicholas Hotel. Miner gave the nails, hinges and windows, released the soldier Amos Shaw to teach and paid his wages, and in 1873 he gave land on the bluff for a brick school.

What the plaque says

Site of the First Permanent School House in Dakota Territory School house erected 1864 Monument erected 1909

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Music Museum — 0.5 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 6.8 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• Ponca State Park — 17 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.

More markers nearby

• Grand Officers — steps away
• Andrew Lee — 0.3 mi
• Vermillion — 0.8 mi
• Bruyer Church — 4.2 mi