Franklin Academy

Frank W. Cyr, born in Franklin on July 7, 1900, became a Teachers College professor who studied rural schools. A survey he began in 1937 found children riding to class in trucks, mismatched buses and even horse-drawn wheat wagons. In April 1939, on a $5,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant, he gathered transportation officials from all 48 states and bus-industry specialists at the college for seven days. They voted on 44 standards, from body lengths to aisle widths, and chose a color called National School Bus Chrome, because black lettering on it reads best in early-morning and late-afternoon half-light.

What the plaque says

Franklin Academy The Franklin Academy occupied this site from 1881 until 1922. It was one of six Congregational Church- affiliated academies in Nebraska. Others were located at Crete, York, Neligh, Weeping Water, and Chadron. Over 2,500 students in college preparatory studies attended the Franklin Academy. Distinguished alumni include author Adah Patterson, Federal Judge Robert Van Pelt, and Dr. Frank Cyr of Columbia University, under whose leadership the standard yellow school bus was developed. There were originally four buildings on the campus, now the Franklin city park: the main academy build- ing; Stewart Hall, a boys' dormitory; Harrison Hall, a girls' dormitory named in honor of academy founder Reverend C. S. Harrison; and Dupee Music Hall, constructed in 1901. Dupee Music Hall still stands at its original site, immediately west of here, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Financial problems and declining enrollment due to the increasing number of public high schools caused the academy's closing. Franklin County Historical Society Franklin Congregational United Church of Christ Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harlan County Lake — 14 mi
  Nebraska's second-largest lake, held behind an Army Corps dam on the Republican between Alma and Republican City, built after the flood of 1935 ran bluff to bluff.
• Home on the Range Cabin — 15 mi
  Dr. Brewster Higley's 1872 homestead cabin on West Beaver Creek in Smith County, where he wrote the poem that became Home on the Range, kept on its ground by a farm couple who would not sell it.
• National Willa Cather Center — 23 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 — 24 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

• Franklin County — 0.3 mi
• Osco Cemetery and School — 20 mi
• Walker's Ranch — 22 mi
• St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church — 23 mi