History

With the opening of the Flathead Indian Reservation to homesteading in 1910, it brought in an influx of pioneers to start farming operations. One group settled about six miles south of Polson, still in Flathead County, which became known as Reservoir Valley. Some of those early settlers coming to the place without fences "where buffalo and long horned cattle roamed free" were: The Jacob Reins; the George McAlear Family of six who came when Fay was 15 years old with the "only available place to live was a log house with a dirt roof and floor, located in the middle of what is now Pablo Reservoir"; Charles Edward and Pearl Caffrey; the Christ Maier’s; Fred and Mollie Blumhagen; John B. And Rosa A. Elie; Charles and Gertrude Leavell family; Carl and Katie Seifert; The Victor Charles and Jennie McAllister’s; and Glover’s. The Caffrey story gives insight to that period of settlement:

Charles Edward and Olive Pearl Caffrey filed on a 80 acre homestead site unseen when the Reservation opened in 1910. The land was clay and rocks and couldn’t be farmed so he let it go and rented a place one mile west of Pablo. In 1913 the Caffreys left Kalispell for Polson with two loaded wagons and a two horse two seated buggy. "We were three days driving down. The roads were really just trails. We came down the west lake shore. Meals were cooked over an open fire and we slept out under the stars."

The town of Pablo had its own bank, movie theater, blacksmith shop, school including two years of high school and a saw mill all at one time:

Every Saturday was a shopping day. Cream, butter, and eggs were taken to town and a weeks supply of groceries were brought home. Driving to Polson was a trip straight across country. There were no fences and no Pablo Reservoir. The road was a rough, rocky, dusty trail.

We (Paul, Dee, Charles,Max, Venus Mutchler, JuneCarson, Caffrey) walked three miles to and from the Reservoir Valley School from the rented place of our parents one mile west of Pablo.

The saw mill burned and later Pablo was devastated by fire. Only the grocery store with Post Office in the rear was left of the business district. We saw the railroad built from Dixon to Polson, saw Kerr Dam built and power lines to most farms. The irrigation dam and ditches, roads and fences, homes and farms all combined to obliterate the prairie.

The Need for a School in Reservoir Valley

Soon there were enough settlers in the area to require a school for their many children. The Reservoir Valley district was established by Flathead County on March 1, 1911. Originally school opened in the fall in a room of the John Elie house. (Harold Seifert says where Blumhagens lived, later know as the Howard Light and Dick Connerly place?) School was held here while the school was being built in 1911 and 1912 on one acre of land in the northwest corner of Mr. and Mrs. Anton Fox’s land. The Kalispell land owners donated the acre with the agreement that it be returned to them should the school cease to exist. The location is now at the corner of Light Road East and South Stasso Road one-half mile south and one-half mile east of the Eli Gap road. The school was the typical rectangular model with one large room with a hallway along the west end, used for coats, overshoes, water bucket and wash basin. Two outhouses, boys & girls, were located on the property. A potbellied stove provided the heat and it was the teacher’s duty to have the fire going and the school warm by the time the students arrived. The windows provided the only source of light.

The first teacher was Ethel Mountjoy who taught in Ely’s home until the school was built. She later married a man who was Principal of Schools at Lonepine, John McCoy. Lois Blumhagen Cornelius remembers being told, "She boarded with the Jacob Rein family. Mrs. Rein, my grandmother, boarded teachers for many years. Teachers names I remember Mom (Mollie Rein Blumhagen) talking about: Mountjoy, Marantette (from Columbia Falls), McGloughlin, Nillie Bodish Bockmeyer."

The first school trustees were C.M. Blumhagen, Jacob Rein, Frank Lipton, and clerk John F. Cook. The teacher had all eight grades, performing all the duties to maintain the school. Board and room was prearranged by the trustees at one of the close neighbor’s, however, it usually required a one mile walk to and from school.

The first twenty-one students were: Dee, Venus (Mutchler), June, Paul, and Charles Caffrey; Ross, Velma, and Perine Leavell; John, Clovis, and Alice Elie; John and Wilhelmina Glover, Donald McAllister; Mary and Martin Blumhagen, Estelle, Lydia, and Marie Maier; Pearl Rein, and Earl McAlear. Since some of the students lived so far from school, they rode horses or came in a buggy.

The school house served the community in many ways. The Max and Augusta Garbe family farmed a little closer to Pablo with children going to school in Pablo, but in 1918 and 1919 they attended Lutheran church services in the Reservoir Valley and Mud Creek schoolhouses with ministers coming by bus from Kalispell and Missoula until church was held in Pablo.

Roads within the school district were not yet good and an early transfer of territory on the fringes of the district occurred. On April 8, 1922, Oscar E. And Sylvia M. Bashor were granted an annexation of their property to Polson School District #23. They petitioned to transfer their three children Esther C., Edith S., and Lois T. to attend Polson because they lived geographically adjacent to the Polson district, county roads were not always open, the road to Reservoir Valley was rough and hilly, not safe for children to drive over, and too far to walk, the road is snow-clogged, and no transportation was provided and because the Polson school district ran a free school bus within one mile on well graded roads, the girls were nearly ready for high school in Polson, and finally "being a graded school, we would have better school advantages." The Flathead County Superintendent of Schools approved the annexation after appropriate hearings. No record of contest is recorded.

Student Memories

Memories of Reservoir Valley School from the twenties onward are rich. Howard F. Seifert and Lois Blumhagen Cornelius share recollections from the twenties. Younger classmates and siblings Winnette Meyers Ellsworth, Eleanor Blumhagen Seifert, and Caroline Seifert Miller shared memories into the thirties. Betty "Joan" Seifert Andersen carries the Reservoir Valley School story into the forties.

The School Day at Reservoir Valley from the Twenties

by Howard F. Seifert and Lois Blumhagen Cornelius

The school day began with the Pledge of Allegiance to the US Flag, followed by fifteen minutes of singing such songs as, "Old Black Joe," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Swannie River," and "Old McDonald had a Farm," etc. Special time was devoted to reading, writing, and arithmetic, followed by geography, history, and civics. The State and County Superintendents dictated the required subjects for high school graduation. Students were required to take state exams to graduate. Howard wrote:

In 1927, the first teacher had the wrong instruction manual. She left the school at Christmas and the new teacher discovered the error. Upon taking the state exams in the spring, all five eighth graders failed to pass the state exams. I was one of these five students and we all went to summer school in Polson, MT taught by the County Superintendent and all five graduated to high school.

During the school day, there was a fifteen minute recess mid-morning and mid-afternoon in which time the students could go to their respective outdoor toilets at the east side of the one acre plot. When the fifteen minutes were up, the teacher would ring a hand held bell to resume school. During school hours the teacher had student hand signals for certain requests. To raise the hand was a question for the teacher. Sometimes the teacher would not notice and the student would snap their finger for attention which was frowned on as it disrupted the other students. To raise two fingers was authorization to go to the outdoor toilet, one finger to get a drink, etc. The Chapmans, Maiers, Leavell’s, and Krause’s drove or rode horses to school so there was a barn at the back of the school yard.

During the one hour lunch period, it took only a few minutes to eat as the students were anxious to play. They had games such as baseball, pump-pump pull away, dare base, shooting marbles, and in the winter was fox and goose and building a snow fort and have a snowball fight.

Work at the school in later years was volunteer. The men resided and painted the school. The women always cleaned the school and washed the curtains. To aid the teacher with her duties, a student club was formed appointing a weekly group of two students each for certain tasks. This covered to wash the blackboard, dust the erasers, bring in firewood, and get water in a bucket from Carl Seifert’s cistern across the road. Neighbors hauled water home by water tank from Mudcreek, east of Pablo, MT. This is what they called house water. Another cistern was used for stock water. The two assigned to carry a daily bucket of water from the neighbor’s cistern to the school about two blocks away were upper grade students. This was necessary as the cistern did not have a pump and the students had to be crafty enough to lower a bucket with a rope and tip it so the bucket would fill. At school, there was a dipper in the bucket and everyone drank from the same dipper. There was very little of washing of hands.

Health problems were a daily experience. If one student acquired an affliction, it usually affected all students. The common cold was most numerous followed by pinkeye, measles, whooping cough, mumps, chicken-pox, etc. This school was not bothered by head lice or seven year itch which was in the area.

Holidays were always looked forward to as the students were relieved of some of their studies. The students with the instruction of the teacher usually made all their decorations for the various occasions. Christmas was always special as each student was in a play, was decorated with homemade paper decorations, string popcorn, a few bulbs and tinsel from neighbors, live candles were placed on the tree in candle holders lit at the end of the programs. Each student received a bag of candy which also contained an orange which was a special treat.

The school continued with all eight grades and was made into a two room with two teachers as the area became settled, but he two room school only lasted not more than two years. There were not enough students. Then they made it into one room. "The school was never locked and open the year around without any damage. It would be unthinkable today," said Howard.

Lois Blumhagen Cornelius started school in 1923 with first grade teacher Margaret Spencer (Bob Spencer’s sister). Other teachers of the 1920's were: Verna McBroom, Anna Oman, Mrs. Eggstaff substituted (her husband a teacher in Polson) for Helen Marie Quilling, Mary Wangen, Rita McBride (Grant), Jewel Perkins, and Ann Hyak. Lois wrote, "My dad built the teacherage after I was out of the eighth grade the fall of 1930 I started high school."

Memories from the Thirties

by Winnette Meyers Ellsworth, Eleanor Blumhagen Seifert and Caroline Seifert Miller

Caroline Seifert Miller’s "fondest memories are my early years at Reservoir Valley Grade School. Grades were from one to eighth grade with about fourteen students. On cold days we all hovered over a potbelly woodstove while the teacher read to us or everyone told stories."

Eleanor Blumhagen Seifert recalls the first grade at Reservoir Valley:

Finally in September 1928, I had reached the magic age of six and I was allowed to go to school, a much looked forward to event. I knew all the kids, since we were all neighbors and my brother Walter would be in the fourth grade and my sister Lois in the sixth. Even our teacher, Miss Rita McBride (later Rita Grant) was already my friend, since she had boarded at our house the first half of 1928 when she came from Spokane, WA to teach at Reservoir Valley. How lucky I was. Now I see the little ones so frightened when they start school because they don’t know anyone. There were three of us in the first grade, Winnette, Edie and I. I’m sure we couldn’t have been allotted much class time, since the teacher taught all eight grades, but we learned our ABC’s, learned to read by the phonics method, knew our numbers and simple arithmetic, and learned to write by the time the year was over. We brought our lunch from home, my first lunch bucket had been my grandfather’s tobacco box. In the first grade, lunch was quite a treat, but it became less so each year and finally only pure hunger made it edible. Winnette and I went on through all grades of school together and graduated from Polson High School with the class of 1940, and remain friends, though miles apart, these many years later.

Eleanor continued:

Third grade brought another new teacher, Mrs. Hilda N. Yarlett. She had a son, Lewis, probably in the sixth grade. During the summer, the school district had built a two room house in the corner of the school yard, so after many years, the teacher finally had a place of her own to live in. We also had a new family move into the neighborhood, so we had a new classmate, Ethel, who finished the eighth grade with us. Mrs. Yarlett taught at Reservoir Valley for four years - one year with Eileen Jensen and short time substitute Mrs. CM Sutherland. For the 1932-33 school year, it was decided there were just too many students for one teacher to handle, so the school was divided into two rooms. Miss Eileen Jensen of Polson taught the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and Mrs. Yarlett taught the lower grades. However, the arrangement was short-lived and we were back to a one room school with Mrs. Yarlett for another year. I believe Mrs. Yarlett taught in Polson after that. I’ve always considered her one of my best teachers. Her son Lewis graduated from Polson High School in 1937.

Caroline too remembers Hilda Yarlett:

In those days the teachers salary must have been very meager. [Hilda Yarlett started in 1930 at $936 for nine months teaching and ended in 1934 with a drop to $810 due to the depression.] I say this because my teacher who taught most of my grade school was Hilda Yarlett, an elderly lady who only had three dresses. For a while she would come for her evening meal at our three-room unpainted house which was right across from the school. She had a very small yellow two-room house called "The Teacherage" in the southeast corner of the school yard. She had to carry water from the Seifert cistern which my brothers had to haul water by horses and water tank from Mud Creek (beyond Pablo). It was their job to clean the frogs and snakes out before filling the cistern. Also to move the outhouses.

Tom and Addison Farrell attended all eight grades at Reservoir Valley and sister Myrna attended her first three grades there also while Mrs. Yarlett was teacher.

In 1934, Miss Loretta Kelly from North Dakota came to teach at Reservoir Valley and stayed for two years to teach sixteen white and two Indian Reservoir Valley students. Eleanor wrote:

Those two years were my last there also. We had to pass state examinations to leave grade school. I really considered it an insult to question what we had learned just because we went to a country school. So for two days, we took tests at the Court House, and waited for our scores from the State Superintendent of Schools. Of course we passed!

Abelanda Blonda McBeth and Grace West taught in 1936-37 and Ray E. Kari taught for the next nine years. Winnette reminisced:

Looking back, I realize that there were good teachers, and poor, but mostly good. The young children were helped by the older students, as the teacher did not have the time to spend on one class more than another. Too, being a retired teacher, I learned that children learn better and quicker from other children than from adults.

Winnette shared these anecdotes on walks to school:

The spring and fall months were beautiful. There were science lessons to be learned too. I knew which wildflowers bloomed first and why there were greener patches some places than others-dead animals (rabbits, gophers, etc.) were fertilizer.

Some of the time I rode horses back to school but walked over hill and dale when the weather permitted, although occasionally I got caught in a blizzard. My little mare was old, small and very gentle. When the snow drifts were too deep for the horse to plunge through, I would back track and stay home that day or my father would take us to school in the sled. One winter morning, the fog was so dense one couldn’t see more than six inches ahead. We were walking that day, so I asked my father how we were going to get to school. He said to follow the fence. The school was two and one half miles east of us, but not being able to distinguish one direction from another, due to the fog, I followed the north-south fence and ended up in the neighbors’ back yard. Those were hard years, although, at the time I didn’t realize it, as it was just a way of life. I knew no other.

School wasn’t all work. We had parties for Valentine’s Day and Christmas meant putting on a program that was polished enough to invite our parents for an evening get-together. That meant memorizing and practicing for some weeks before. Some members of the community got a tree from the woods that we decorated and those that owned gasoline lanterns brought them for light. We had drawn names to buy one gift, and would receive one gift, and the school board bought some hard candy, a few nuts, and either an apple or orange to fix each of us a goodie sack. These were depression days, so it was really a treat we looked forward to.

The women’s club sponsored dances at the school house on Saturday nights--perhaps six or seven times during the school year, to raise money to help the school with their needs, so we learned to dance there as well. People came from all over including Polson. Caroline " was always put to sleep on desks that had been pushed to the side. Because my father was always the bouncer to throw the drunks out, I never slept but lay in fear as many wanted to fight. On Sunday morning, all six of us kids rushed over to clear the yards of plates as the neighbors all brought sandwiches and cake and coffee for a snack at midnight. We also found many treasures of jewelry lost and money as the drinkers had to go to the cars to drink. Everyone had a great time with a four piece band who played mostly western with square dances, waltzes and schottische. My regret is that both our house and the school house are gone and now has a wheat field. It was just south of Pablo Reservoir and a bit west. We lived on the edge of the wild bird reserve. I am grateful for the companionship and ideals taught by going to a small school."

Into the Forties with Betty "Joan" Seifert Andersen

I (Betty Seifert) guess the reason Reservoir Valley School was so important to me was because my grandparents, Carl and Katie Seifert, were busy helping to make the school and community a good place to live and raise children. Their six children: Albert (my dad), Howard, Clarence, Mayme, Virginia, and Caroline all attended Reservoir Valley School from first through eighth grade.

I started Reservoir Valley School at the age of five. We lived right across the road at the time and the teacher Ray Kari said to my mother, "Betty, she just as well start school as she’s over here all the time anyway." So I started young. Mr. Kari and Ervin Falgren, his high school boarder, used to come over to our house for supper lots of nights. I don’t know if they paid my folks for meals or not. One night when they came over for supper, my mom had seen me sitting out in a corner of the school yard in the middle of the day and asked Mr. Kari what the problem was. He said, "Well, Betty, I had to wash her mouth out with Lifeboy soap, she had to stop cussing." But I was raised with my Dad and Uncle Clarence and they cussed a lot. Then before I started school, the teacher admitted they used to pay me a penny to cuss. But I learned my lesson.

Ray Kari was my teacher for seven years. Then he moved on to Pablo so I had Edith Lacock for my eighth grade teacher. Seemed I helped with the other kids that year instead of learning much for myself. I never had a classmate all eight years, to my knowledge, and if I did, they must have came and went the same year.

At Christmas time we made red and green paper chains and other decorations for the tree. One time, we were stringing up the burlap curtains to make a stage and Leonard Chambers swallowed a tack. Mr. Kari went to the teacherage and got some dry bread and had him eat it, then walk home and tell his folks. It was about four miles to his home.

We moved below Eli Gap to a farm when I was in the second grade. After that I had about two miles to walk to school, regardless of the weather. One winter my Dad took me to school in the big truck and he was going to town for supplies. It was snowing and blowing hard. He said he would pick me up that night, as the snow was so deep and I was quite small. School was out, and no one came, so Mr. Kari said I better stay at school, as I was the only student that came from below Eli Gap that day. Marion Boice and I usually walked together. Anyway, so it was supper time, so Mr. Kari opened a can of corn and made a hamburger patty. I thought it was great having supper at the teacherage. Finally about 6:30 here came my mom walking after me. My uncle lived with us and he finished the chores and took care of my brother Carl who was about two. All this time my Dad was stuck in what they called the cut, shoveling Harry Barrow Hill, which was just south of the Kerr Dam Road. There was a fellow Harry who lived there, he usually made coffee for the lots of people who got stuck in this cut. My dad never got home until about three in the morning. Mom and I walked on home in the cold and deep snow and I was so tired, she kind of had to drag me. But the story goes, Mom was pretty sure the teacher would not let me start out alone with the weather conditions. My mom and I both froze our legs and feet.

The Christmas programs at school were such fun to prepare for, the poems, plays, etc. Mr. Kari did not know music too well but we learned the words and sang the songs. Then Mrs. Boice would come and play the piano a couple times to rehearse. When the program was over and Santa came with a little sack with an orange, a few peanuts, and a dab of candy, we thought we really had it made. Great memories.

The year end school picnic was always great. We went up to North Crow Creek. Everyone brought potluck and we made several freezers of ice cream, everyone taking their turn at turning the crank.

One recess during the winter, Buck Snyder pushed me off the school steps. I hit my knee hard and could feel the warm blood on my leg. I raised my hand to go to the outhouse. I had on long underwear, brown stockings, and some homemade wool pants. I pulled them down and my knee was split open about one inch. I went back up to the schoolhouse and asked Mr. Kari for some gauze and tape. He said, "What’s wrong?" I said, "My knee’s split open." So back to the outhouse to tape up my knee. I have a wide one inch scar to this day.

We never did have a well. They finally made a cistern and hauled the drinking water from town. By the time I went, we had a pail full and dipper. Everyone drank out of the same dipper. Some of the boys carried wood in at night. Then the teacher would start the stove, so the chill would be off when we got to school. We all packed our lunches. I still have the little lard pail I carried mine in. We had a family that didn’t have as much as we did and he usually had a lard sandwich and I usually had jelly or fried egg, and he would ask me if we could trade sandwiches. I would trade quite often so he could have something better. I usually took a bit e of the trade and put it back in my pail. Sometimes we had an apple and cookies if we had any, so it all worked out.

We planted a tree and some bushes when I was in the fifth grade. The tree and one outhouse is all that stands there in the corner now where the school house was.

I have the original school bell that called the children to class. Evidently the clapper broke but a washer took its place. It is in good shape and sounds the same. It’s special to me as I was called to class with it for eight years. When the Church of Nazarene bought the school and moved it to Pablo, I explained the bell situation and they gave it to me. The Reservoir Valley Grange met at the schoolhouse for their meetings and the Reservoir Valley Ladies Aide met there sometimes. They did the major cleaning, made curtains, etc. to help out the school.

I started there, completing the eighth grade. My brother, Carl Seifert, started first through eight grade, when they closed the school and bussed them to town (not enough pupils). I think it was the end of the school year of 1949.

My last happy occasion at the schoolhouse was November 10, 1951 when my husband, Howard, and I held our wedding dance there, with lots of neighbors and friends furnishing the music, lots of good food, and a great time had by all.

The School Closed in 1949 and the District was Abandoned in 1960.

The Reservoir Valley School building was sold and moved to Pablo, MT where it was converted into the Church of the Nazarene. The land is now a wheat field along the wild bird reserve of Pablo Reservoir.

In 1949 Reservoir Valley District #55 became part of Polson High School District #23 by action of The Lake County Commissioners: A. J. Riggert, John Wigfield, and Oliver Brown and J. B. Kiracofe, County Superintendent of Schools acting as a High School Building District Board. All Lake County school districts were sorted into appropriate high school districts by that action.

By 1959 the abandoned district was split by petition into Ronan School District No. 28 and Polson School District No. 23. The petitioners for Ronan holding property in district #55 were: Wm. Emerson, Claude Lytton, Ida Lytton, Earl Mutchler, Jr., Robert Mutchler, Bonnie Mutchler, E. E. Mutchler, Edward R. Unger, and H. A. Fullerton. District #55 petitioners for Polson were: Veiner Rose, Nora L. Pierson, Chester Paulson, Gordon Carter, Carl W. Paulson, H. F. Pierson, Floyd A. Olsen, Elmer M. Steers, Charles E. Crouch, Walteen Milner, Lena E. Milner, and Mrs. M. C. Gilhistsen. The abandonment proceeded and the attachments were made as requested by the petitioners effective January 14, 1960.