Spring Creek School

The school opened in a county that was almost all cattle range. The Handbook of Texas says Thomas S. Bugbee started the Quarter Circle T in 1876, that William E. Anderson's Scissors Ranch followed at Adobe Walls in 1878, and that the two later formed the nucleus of the Turkey Track. In 1890 the county had nine ranches and fifty-eight residents. By 1900 it had 303 people and some 29,600 cattle, and its first school met that year in a dugout on the Turkey Track. Sixteen school districts existed by 1910.

What the plaque says

Established in 1900, a year before Hutchinson County was formally organized, the Spring Creek School is an early and significant part of the county's educational heritage. In that year, W. B. Haile and other area ranchers collected funds to buy materials to build the first schoolhouse. Located on the Harvey Ranch near Spring Creek, the schoolhouse served 13 students, taught by Mrs. L. S. Ford that first, 60-day school year. In 1901, the Hutchinson County commissioners court divided the county into four school districts, Spring Creek being named district #4. At that time, schools were under the supervision of a superintendent of county education, who by 1903 was W. B. Haile. When the area's population shifted, the first schoolhouse was moved to Haile Ranch and later to the Terry Ranch before becoming too small for the number of students enrolled. It was replaced sometime before 1930; this second building burned in 1932 but was rebuilt. The next building, a red brick structure, was completed in 1938 and offered the students and teachers six classrooms, a gymnasium-auditorium and a library. In 1949, the White Deer Creek School District consolidated with Spring Creek. At the turn of the 21st century, the Spring Creek School retained its status as an independent school district, serving this rural part of Hutchinson County. Administrators have directed strong educational and extra-curricular programs throughout the school's history. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hutchinson County Museum — 5.1 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 16 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.
• White Deer Land Museum — 21 mi
  The 1916 Pampa office of the land company that sold a foreclosed British ranch to wheat farmers, with an annex holding one of the Panhandle's largest Red River War collections.
• Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center — 21 mi
  The old Harris Drug Store in Pampa, where a young Woody Guthrie jerked sodas and found his first guitar, now a folk music center with Friday night jam sessions.

More markers nearby

• Twentieth Century Club — 5.0 mi
• Grand Hotel and Grand Hardware Building — 5.1 mi
• First Methodist Church of Borger — 5.3 mi
• Beale Road — 5.9 mi