Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/189657
61 Restoring a Landmark IN 1960, THE CALIFORNIA TEACHERS ASSOCIATION AND CALIFORNIA'S SCHOOLCHILDREN STEPPED IN TO SAVE THE STATE'S FIRST BRICK SCHOOLHOUSE. By Craig Collins On Unlike many of March 27 1850, a Dr. , Thaddeus Hildreth, of California's pioneer Maine, along with sever- settlements, howeval other prospectors, stumbled across er, Columbia did $4,860 worth of gold in a Sierra foot- not become a ghost hills gulch about 50 miles west of what town; a core group of citizens, intent on is now Yosemite National Park. Within making their homes there, invested in a month, the tent-and-shanty settlement public buildings and projects including known as Hildreth Diggins had sprung a schoolhouse that was, in its size and up out of nowhere, with around 5,000 prominence, unheard of for a Gold Rush fortune-hunters erecting wood-frame town. The Columbia schoolhouse, made buildings to house the miners and sup- of red brick, sat high on a hill overlookport their efforts. More than 150 stores, ing the rest of the town, with two floors – shops, saloons, and other businesses had one each for elementary and secondary been established by 1852; at its peak, students. The building was completed in the settlement – later given the more October 1860 at a cost of $4,890 – just permanent-sounding name of Columbia a few dollars more than the placer depos– was home to about 6,000 residents, it that launched the town – and opened its first session with 368 students, making it the second-largest city two teachers, and a principal. in California. It was considThe problem with brick ered, briefly, as a site for The Columbia buildings, as many the state capital. schoolhouse, made Californians learned, The problem with hastof red brick, sat high on was that they crumbled ily built wooden builda hill overlooking the in earthquakes. While ings, Columbians soon rest of the town. Columbia was spared this learned, was that they fate, its schoolhouse did not burned. Two fires, in 1854 measure up to the building codes and 1857, destroyed much of the town, and many new buildings were gradually phased in after San Francisco's built with bricks, formed from local 1906 earthquake. It remained in contin, clay and dried in the sun. By 1860, the uous use until 1937 when a newer, upto-code Columbia school opened nearColumbia Gold Rush was spent, and the town's population began to decline. by. The old building sat abandoned for 10 years, and then was purchased by the State of California for $1.00. As California's first two-story brick schoolhouse neared its 1960 centennial, CTA helped launch a fundraising campaign to restore it to its former glory; across the state, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren donated their spare change, raising literally $40,000 in pennies, nickels, and dimes. CTA's board of directors, upon learning this The Columbia schoolhouse pre- and post-restoration. amount was still about $30,000 short, voted to commit CTA funds and finish the job. Today, thanks in part to CTA's continuing sponsorship, visitors to the cluster of 30 Gold Rush-era buildings within Columbia State Historic Park – including frequent busloads of area schoolchildren – can visit the restored schoolhouse and learn what school was like in 1860s California; on display in each classroom are the old wooden desks and inkwells, slate blackboards, and potbellied heat stoves from back in the day. OCTOBER 201 3 Educator 10 Oct 2013 v2.1 int.indd 61 www.cta.org 61 10/7/13 9:39 PM