Oats Park School

When Fallon was filling with families drawn by the new irrigation, the town built itself a schoolhouse worthy of the moment. Frederick DeLongchamps, soon to be Nevada's most prolific architect, drew the plans in 1914—among his earliest schools, brick in two contrasting colors, with maple floors and careful interior trim. Wings went up in 1921 as the rooms filled. The last class graduated in 1975. Rather than let it fall, the Churchill Arts Council reopened it in 2003 as the Oats Park Art Center, still serving the town.

What the plaque says

The Oats Park School was designed in 1914 by Frederick J. DeLongchamps, Nevada's pre-eminent architect of the period. He was also responsible for the 1921 north and south wing additions. This building is one of his earliest, and perhaps, first, public school designs. The structure was placed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1990 because of its importance in the history of local education and its architectural significance, including the use of contrasting brick colors and attention to interior detail. In 1995, the Churchill Arts Council began construction and renovation on the facility for its use as a multi-discipline cultural center. Drawing on the building's legacy of serving the community, the Churchill Arts Council reopened the building as the Oats Park Art Center in February, 2003.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grimes Point — 8.5 mi
  Hundreds of desert-varnished boulders carved over eight thousand years — the Great Basin's most accessible rock art
• Sand Mountain — 24 mi
  Nevada's largest dune — a 600-foot mountain of singing sand, a buried Pony Express station, and a butterfly found nowhere else

More markers nearby

• Churchill County Courthouse — 0.5 mi
• Grimes Point — 8.2 mi
• Ragtown — 8.3 mi
• Stillwater — 12 mi