Wayside Community

Wayside's schoolhouse belonged to a county that put early weight on education. The Handbook of Texas counts four schools serving 165 pupils in Roberts County by 1899 and records the climb in later decades: 22 percent of residents had finished high school in 1950, 78 percent in 1980 and 90 percent in 2000. Oil was found in the county in 1945, and more than 40 million barrels had been produced by 1990. Roberts County has stayed one of the most sparsely populated in Texas, and Wayside lies today in the Pampa micropolitan area.

What the plaque says

Settlers came to this locality in 1876. The county was organized in 1889. Pioneer school district no. 5 originated by court order in 1890 to serve this area with schools known as Tallahone, Poole, and Wayside, taught usually in homes. In 1914, Frederic Foster of New York gave this 2-acre school site to the county. The district bought materials, and patrons erected this 28 x 36-foot schoolhouse, painting it red. It soon became the focus for the community - site for elections, church services, and other activities, as well as housing the Wayside School. The trustees in 1914 were James A. Poole, J. M. Story, and Earl Talley. Despite enrolment fluctuations caused by drouths, oil booms, and other economic factors, Wayside prided itself on scholastic excellence. Beginning in 1929, high school students were transferred by bus into Pampa, Wayside District paying their tuition. In 1933-1934, all grades were transferred - an arrangement used until 1950, when Wayside consolidated with Pampa. White Deer Land Company, successor to original donor Frederic Foster, then deeded the red schoolhouse for continuing community use to trustees Paul Caylor, R. E. Montgomery, and J. T. Roberts. Current trustees are C. W. Osborne, J. T. Rogers, and Jack Sloan. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White Deer Land Museum — 6.9 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 — 7.1 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.
• Roberts County Museum — 18 mi
  The county museum in Miami's old Santa Fe depot, holding mammoth bones and Clovis points from a 1934 dig, in the cow town that has held a cow-calling contest since 1949.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Peter W. Gray — 6.8 mi
• First Methodist Church of Pampa — 6.8 mi
• Gray County 50th Year Anniversary — 6.9 mi
• Vittorio Emanuel von Brunow, M. D. — 6.9 mi