Volume 11 , Issue 4

Woods County High School - 1905-1907

Northwest Normal School at Alva, the county seat, had been in operation since 1897 providing high school opportunity for the youth of Alva and some others who attended its preparatory department. However, most pupils of that large county could not conveniently reach either Alva or Tonkawa where the Oklahoma Preparatory School had opened in 1902.

On November 8, 1904, Woods County electors voted, 2,509 to 2,104, to establish a county high school. The 1903 amendment permitted county commissioners to locate a school not already located by the terms of the election. This was a time when Woods, Alfalfa and Major counties were still a part of "M" county -- before the split in 1907 at statehood.

A local county commissioner induced the other two members to locate the school at Helena if the people voted its establishment. This was a small town and in an area rather remote from much of the county's population. Because of this, the school was doomed to have much difficulty in drawing sufficient enrollment.

In January, 1905, the newly appointed trustees made plans to erect a building of 32 rooms on 15 acres of campus just outside Helena. The next legislature passed a law authorizing Dick's Township to vote bonds for the erection and equipment of Woods County High School, Helena, Oklahoma .... in the sum of $5,000.

With bonds voted by the county and those voted by the home township, sufficient money was raised for land, building, and equipment of the only county high school that still stands in Oklahoma. When Woods County High School first opened, in the Autumn of 1905, there was an initial enrollment of 185. Enrollment did not reach a figure comparable to the provisions made at any time during the four years of its life, it being really a regional school.

The first faculty of six teachers included excellent talent, according to a pupil who did all her high school work there, finishing with the first graduating class, in 1908. Like most Oklahoma high schools then, it offered a three-year course, pupils taking five subjects each year and entering college on 15 units. The first class included seven members, and six of them attended college, the seventh already married at graduation.

At first, local churches were used by classes while the building was being completed. J. H. Sawtell was the first principal, later an instructor in Government at the University of Oklahoma. On the staff the first year, as teacher and athletic coach, was J. P. Evans, who had been the first county superintendent of Kiowa county. In 1907, the relatively small Alfalfa county inherited the school with its $60,000 bonded indebtedness and annual operating cost of $6,000. J. P. Evans succeeded Sawtell as principal, being succeeded by J. H. Findlay, the last principal of Alfalfa County High School.

The name had been changed to Alfalfa County High School. The tax payers of Alfalfa county found the cost of retiring bonds and operating the school more than they could bear. On December 14, 1909, Alfalfa county voted, 1,433 to 144, to discontinue the high school which had already closed the previous spring, and to give the campus and buildings to the State.

The Connell School of Agriculture, one of the six secondary agricultural schools in the new State, was already using the school plant. When that school's appropriation was cut off in 1917, Connell closed, its property then was given to the Helena District. In 1921, the State bought the property from the Helena District to open a State orphanage, called West Oklahoma State Home.
  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---