History

MOUNTAIN VIEW SCHOOL 1916 - 1926

The Mountain View area is generally considered to be the area east of Highway 93 north of Mud Creek Trail and south of Turtle Lake. Jessie Sandage Clemans researched and wrote much of the history of the schools of the area for In the Shadows of the Missions. Her primary work has been added to by the Lake County Country School Historians.

The Dubay School about 1907 to 1912

Edmond J. Dubay was a devoted teacher of Indian boys in the Father's school back in the '80's. Edmond Dubay was born December 31, 1880 in Maine and left there at 22 with P. Thibodeau to come west. They traveled by railroad to Silver Bow where the railroad ended and walked to Deer Lodge. From there they took a stage coach to Missoula, arriving March 1, 1882 where they worked that spring and summer with a crew surveying for the Northern Pacific Railroad. The following year Mr. Dubay came to the St. Ignatius mission. Because he had a fair education the Jesuit Fathers employed him to teach Indian children. Thus he served as the first teacher at the mission, other than the fathers, for a period of four years. While at the mission, he met teacher Charles Ermatinger who had come to the valley about 1884.

Later Mr. Dubay homesteaded near Columbia Falls and was appointed as an early road supervisor in Flathead County. Two or three years later he returned to the Flathead Reservation and married Mary Bisson (daughter of Raphael Bisson). They moved to a section northeast of Pablo to farm and raise stock. He resided on his farm until his death June 20, 1938. The Dubays had two daughters, Mrs. Pat Normandeau of Ronan and Mrs. Alfred Matt of Pablo, and six sons: Gilbert, Wilfred (later St. Ignatius mayor), Edmond, Jr., Abraham and Herbert Dubay still at the family home.

Edmond Dubay is credited with starting a school on his property on the southwest corner of section 20 [just south of the present Abe Dubay home] in about 1907 making it one of the earliest schools of the region. The children would not have to travel the long distance to the Polson Agency School or board out at the St. Ignatius Mission. The Dubay School was a small one room log building with a sod roof and plank floor. Dubay hired Charles Ermatinger to teach. Mr. Ermatinger had gained his college education at a Canadian institution. After teaching at the Mission, he had been a private tutor for various families. Charles Ermatinger had various vocations as a Canadian mounty, teacher, post-master at Sloan, and private tutor. Ermatinger lived in the small one room log cabin while it was a school. Ermatinger was a tall, refined, French Canadian gentleman trained in the manly art of self defense, which was a good ability to have when the students were frequently as large as the teacher. Mr. Ermatinger lived in the area for many years after the school closed. He died May 29, 1924 at the Sister's Hospital following a long illness. How long and when the little log cabin school with the sod roof existed is not known exactly but it was certainly closed by 1913 when parents joined together to petition for another school.

Attending Ducharme over Turtle Lake Hill

After 1910, when the reservation opened, the number of school age children increased. On July 9, 1913 a petition was presented to District 23 by thirteen families living southeast of Polson for the purpose of obtaining a school more convenient than Polson. The names of thirty-eight children were attached to this petition, representing fourteen families, many of them from the Mountain View area. The apparent result of this petition was the Ducharme School. This school, on the south end of Flathead Lake, opened in 1913. Mountain View children walked or rode horses the three or four miles over Turtle Lake Hill trail to attend. Mary and Oda Lowe attended the first grade there and remembered a bobcat following them through the tall pines and thick undergrowth on their way home. Ducharme school had twenty-two boys and twenty-one girls in its second year 1914-15.

Riding the Bus to Polson

It was quite a hardship for young children to make the trip from Mountain View to Ducharme so a school route to Polson was established in 1914. J. W. Mosley drove the first school wagon from the Mountain View area into Polson in 1914-1915. This was a farm wagon with a canvas cover and wooden seats. The route was over Sutherland Hill, coming out just south of Dupuis Mill. The wagon only came into Mountain View one mile, leaving three to four miles for the pupils to walk or ride horses to get to the school wagon. Mosley's had come from Indiana that summer and lived in Mountain View for that year. They later homesteaded on some acreage nearer Polson. Fern Mosley Tucker, daughter of James W. and Lydia Mosley, would return to Mountain View School in the fall of 1924 to teach the 45 pupils enrolled.

Mountain View People Petition for Their Own School

Many parents were still concerned about this, so a petition was again presented to Flathead County, on March 17, 1916, for the purpose of having a school built in the Mountain View area. At this time the boundary line between Flathead County and Missoula County was just north of Pablo. The petition was signed by F. Bruchmann, R.D. Lowe, H.R. Hegseth, A. Stadler, A. Bockmeyer and Henry Minesinger. The petition stated there was no schoolhouse between Ducharme and ten miles south in Missoula County and the school wagon did not reach most of Mountain View. Pablo was not yet organized and would not have school until 1917 with a building by 1918. The Mountain View School building was to be built by the signers and be ready for the fall term. Twenty-two school age children were in these six families. The petition was apparently granted because by the fall of 1916 a small one room schoolhouse was ready in Mountain View.

Thirteen year old Bertha (Sorenson) and eight year old Gertrude (Salomon) Bocksnick were among those early students. Theodore and Anne Bocksnick moved to Polson in 1916 from Piney, Arkansas. The Bocksnick children finished elementary school at Mountain View. While growing up the children helped their father with the farming, especially plowing the fields, as did most of the farm children of those times.

The location of the school was two miles east on Minesinger trail and one mile north. A small irrigation ditch bringing water from the mountains out into the valley three or four miles had been dug in the early 1900's. This ditch cut across he northwest corner of eighty acres allotted to Maude Savage Bisson numbered 1842, leaving approximately one and three-fourths acres of land cut off form the rest of the field. This piece was fairly centrally located in the community. It was conveyed to the school by Camille and Maude Bisson. The Mountain View School was located in the northwest corner of the same section 20 where the Dubay School had been.

Now the community had a school nothing fancy, just a one room, frame building with a wood stove, hand bell, water bucket and the bare necessities for teaching the three R's. Miss Marie Buhler, daughter of the local Watkins man, was the first teacher and was paid $60.00 a month. No living quarters were provided, so she "boarded around," first at the Lowe homestead, about one half of a mile west of the school and then at the Jim Hern homestead, one-fourth of a mile east. She taught for two years; the third year was taught by Miss Alma Borne. In the school year of 1918-19, there were nineteen boys and twenty girls enrolled.

The small school was very crowded, so the concerned parents continued to petition the school board for other solutions. Many meetings were held during the spring of 1918. Some were in favor of changing district lines so the children in the upper grades could go to Pablo without paying tuition, but Polson School District and Flathead County did not wish to release this area to the large Ronan School District #28 in Missoula County. So the Polson School board proposed to build a larger schoolhouse in the country. So in the school year 1918-19 temporary permission was given to pupils residing within three and one half miles of Missoula County line, (Pablo), and in District 23 until the new school could be built. Those that wished could now attend Pablo schools; at that time it had a four year high school as well as all grades. Tuition fees were negotiated yearly by the boards. The area between Pablo and the Mountain View School was the topic of more than one boundary transfer petition and involved hearings with county superintendents from both Missoula and Flathead Counties. During this period and up to 1926 the area high school children went to Polson or Pablo or wherever arrangements could be made for them.

Bids, advertised for the new school according to specifications of Marion Riffo, Kalispell, were opened at a special session of the Board of Trustees of District 23, held July 15, 1919. Three bids were received. A bid from M.G. Berry was accepted for the amount of $3,195.00 for the building and the low bid for flooring was $847.00 to Mr. Oral Smith. A bid for $249.50 for a Coloric furnace was accepted.

Mr. Berry and a fellow carpenter lived in a tent at the site that summer. The old school building was torn down and the new white frame school, 52 x 26 was ready for the fall term on the same site. It contained one large classroom, a kitchen to be used for an home economics classes that might be taught and also for the teacher's use. A bedroom was also included for the teachers use plus several closets. Sanitary type three hole privies with cement vaults were built. These vaults were filled with water hauled by stone boat from the irrigation ditch.

 

The new school contained a fancy bubble type water cooler, a large dictionary on a stand and plenty of blackboards, all items the old school had lacked. A large iron bell in the belfry had replaced the hand bell.

Dances and box socials were frequently held in the school for the purpose of raising money for items the school needed. Joe Bisson would usually play the fiddle and Josie Bisson would play the guitar for these dances. Andrew and Percy Minesinger often played guitar and sang during the lunch breaks. Money was raised from these affairs to buy a piano.

Forty-four pupils were enrolled the first year in the new school. Mrs. Martha Bower, the teacher, was granted $10.00 a month increase for janitor service providing she procure her own wood to use in the kitchen range.

Because of the large enrollment it was decided to hire two teachers for the next term 1920-21. Estelle and Ethel Baurmet from Big Arm came and with them came Mabel Rude to help with the janitor work .Ronan Seventh Grader Ginny Peavler interviewed Gertrude Minnie Bocksnick Salomon in 1983 to learn:

Well, I went to this old Mountain View school up there which is not here any more. When they built it, they built a big room, because they thought they would have about forty pupils and then they built a little teacherage on, where the teacher lived, bedroom, and kitchen . . . There were just so many kids that they had to have two teachers so they put up a curtain in between us in there to make two rooms. . . So we couldn't make too much noise when we were reciting and stuff so we wouldn't conflict with the other room on the other side. We had the four little grades on one side and the four upper grades on the other side.

. . .the teacher always had us play baseball every recess, morning and night and once a week we chose up sides, boys and girls together, and they would always choose the bigger boys. . . They got chose first on each side for the catchers and the pitchers and so forth and the rest of us girls, we got stuck in the field. . . and maybe sometimes we got to play third base or even second but most of the boys got on the

first base and so forth but it was fun. We enjoyed it. Sometimes we would go to what they would call Ducharme school, another country school out there, and have a baseball game against them . . . especially when the school year was over. We would have our picnic. We'd have it in cahoots with the Ducharme school and then we would have races and another, of course, big baseball game where maybe the fathers would be in on it and everybody seemed to know all the neighbors. It was really a fun time. Seemed like people were more friendly in those days; got to know people better.

Florence Ray Gregg remembers winding the May Pole on May Day. There was always a Christmas program and a Patriotic program on Columbus Day. A picnic was held the last day of school at Turtle Lake.

A brick cistern was built by R.D. Lowe in 1920 for water storage in case the irrigation ditch water became unsatisfactory. This cistern was filled by hauling water by stone boat from a spring near Turtle Lake. Joe Poirier was paid $62.32 for lumber in the fall of 1920 to build a small barn for the students' horses.

The trip to the Mountain View School was not always pleasant in the winter time. Ted Bocksnick remembers on several occasions Mrs. Ed Dubay sitting him in front of her woodstove with the oven door open to warm his near frozen feet before continuing on the last mile home. Bertha Bocksnick Sorenson remembers the day school was let out early because of a coming storm. By the time the Bocksnick and Maschmeier children had walked the first mile, the snow was very deep and blowing hard. Visibility was nil and the children were walking single file and hanging on to one another. Suddenly out of the snow appeared a horse. Bertha looked up and recognized the horse as her father's so she called out, "Dad," and was answered by, "Girl, Girl." It was her father with a sled filled with straw and some warmed socks for their feet. They were so thankful as they had over a mile yet to go and probably would not have made it without help. Teacher Fern Mosley recalls that morning was balmy but by noon there was a raging blizzard and parents came with sleds, wagons, and some were walking, to help their children safely home. Fern resigned at the end of that severe December, but she remembered:

One thing I remember so well. It was the middle of December. The children had played outside in the morning without their coats, it was so balmy. By noon a raging blizzard came. The parents came after their children on horseback, sleds, cars, and even walking. By the time they all got started home, the snow was so heavy, could hardly see across the road. It was a bad one. Got down to 35 degrees below zero. All the next week of school, it was cold and lots of snow.

The curriculum followed was the State Course of Study. The daily programs were posted a semester in advance. It allotted a specific amount of time for each subject for each grade and was rigidly followed. This was one of the first things inspected when the County Superintendent came on her visits, big events for the country school. Pupils were reminded of their manners before these visits and sometimes a program was prepared.

In October of 1921 a local outlaw broke into the school to get some writing paper. He used the paper to write letters home to tell his family where he had stashed the bedding, watches, jewelry, and many clothes he had stolen in the region and even included a map to his camp near Hellroaring Creek by Finley Point. He must not have stolen enough paper from the school because in his letter which listed over 300 words of stolen goods, he wrote he "did not have enough paper to list all of the stuff." But he made a major mistake and posted his letter in Otis Sandage's mail box near the Mountain View School. He even put up the flag and wrapped the letter with a note and two pennies for stamps. Coming home in the dark, Sandage spotted the mail flag up and was suspicious of the letter not from anyone in his family in his rural route box and called the sheriff to investigate. Chester Powell was suspected of killing his wife near his camp and had been hiding out for some time, so pupils were very frightened until he was killed in a shoot out while being apprehended near Hellroaring Creek.

The school year of 1922-23 opened with twenty-two boys and twenty-four girls, the highest enrollment recorded. Estella Baumert and Ida Overby Buchholz were the teachers contracted for $900 each for the 1922-23 school year. When there were two teachers at Mountain View the large room was divided by a large green burlap curtain. Pete Minesinger, a student this year, was admired for his great natural drawing talent. Velma Lowe Lund stated she would gladly do some of his arithmetic problems to acquire one of his drawings. At the April Polson Board Meeting, they decided to notify Estella Baumert that they "expected to reduce the teaching force at the Mountain View School from two teachers to one teacher for the coming year."

Lake County was formed from parts of Missoula and Flathead County in 1923. So the county school affairs were now moved to Polson. Mountain View's only male teacher, Mr. Earl Sykes was hired in 1923 wages were up to $111.11 a month.

Although up to forty-six children were enrolled at Mountain View in one year there was seldom a full class in attendance. Many were unable to attend regularly or finish the eight grades as they were needed at home to help with farm work or help care for the younger family members.

 

June Clopton and Fern Mosley each taught one half of the school year 1924-25.

 

Adeline Hanelt McVay taught the school year 1925-26. The enrollment was large and the facilities were not adequate. There was discussion that the school might be closed. When the last day of school picnic was held May 28, 1926 at Turtle Lake no one knew for sure it would be the last day of school at Mountain View. The entire area was growing and transportation was improving. August 16, 1926 saw the opening of bids for transportation of children from Mountain View to Polson. It was the end of school in the community. Mae Valk (McIntire), Polson teacher at Lincoln School, described the busses:

"The first two school buses, homemade except for the working parts of the trucks, brought the children to town schools from the Ducharme and Mountain View areas. One door at the back of the bus was entry and exit for the kids.

At that time Polson's Lincoln School also held the Court House offices on the second floor.

 

By 1930 Otis Sandage was contracted for Route #1 at five dollars a day for his 1 ton late model truck to run the Mountain View Route. The Mountain View School building was used for dances and other community activities until 1932. Maintaining order at these dances became a problem. In 1932 Mr. Dave Munter was in charge of the empty building and he reported to the board that, "a certain element of that locality overran his authority."So the Board decided "the School House be closed for Public Commercial dances." However that the advertised dance for Saturday night July 23, 1932 be allowed to take place under the supervision of the Sheriffs office."

The building was sold by the County Commissioners sometime after 1932 and it was torn down and used to build several houses. All that is left today is the cement foundation on the little section of land by the creek. There is nothing to tell a passerby that for ten years many trails through the timber and over the hills led to this spot.