The Green Mountain School District #52

The district formed on February 27, 1911. The district extended over the southwest end of Irvine Flats, next to the mountain and extended west, over the hill, into Garcon Gulch. The first two teachers taught in a log cabin until the school was built. Early Flathead Courier notes from the "Spring Valley" column share:

Spring Valley school district gave a cake social and dance, funds amounted to $42.50. And The Green Mountain school started 3 weeks ago in Ray Standifords cabin. Miss Corbin being teacher and 24 pupils in attendance. [November 8, 1912]

By December 27, 1912:

Miss Corbin will be teaching school in a new room before many days. She has been teaching twenty-three scholars in a little log cabin 12 by 14 since September 1st. The new schoolhouse will be called, Green Mountain and will be located on the corner of W. Kramer’s farm.

December of 1912 Walter and Lena Kramer donated about 2 acres of land in the southeast corner of the North _ of the SW 1/4 of Section 10 Township 22 North of Range 22 West on which the school was built. The new Green Mountain School was the southernmost school, near Seines (the John Seines homestead) or the Radio Post Office and Trading Post. It was a part of where Walt Vermedahl’s ranch is now located. Later daughter Ruth Kramer Guinard wrote:

I grew my roots on the Indian reservation, Irvine Flats, where my parents, the Kramers, homesteaded in 1910-1911. That was the homestead era when the Irvine Ranch still ran cattle on the open range, cowboys were still cowboys, transportation was a saddle horse, and neighbors helped one another. Education for the children came from the land, the parents, the pioneer lifestyle, and the teachers who came to Irvine Flats. In the beginning of this school project, the teachers had no furnished housing. Iva Moye and Nellie Covell roomed and boarded with my parents. When Emma Dorris came, she promoted the building of the teacherage. The schoolhouse was the pride of the community. It was the gathering place where plays (local talent, of course) were given, box socials, dances, school and holiday events took place. There were no school buses so the students either walked or rode horseback, except the Morris family who all rode together in a horse-drawn spring wagon or bobsled according to the season and weather. There was a barn on the school grounds to stable the horses.

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By January 10, 1913:

When the Green Mountain school house is completed it will be opened with a big dance.

West Lee has been circulating attention for a road leading west over the mountains towards Camas, lately. It is being quite generally signed.

By January 31, 1913:

The Green Mountain school house was dedicated last Friday evening with a big dance which was well attended. . . . Billy Irvine put up ice last week.

John and Alice Smith filed on an Irvine Flats homestead in 1910. During their time there were 80 homesteader families living in Irvine Flats. By 1911

Smith’s first son Dan was born followed by Vivian, Allen, Dorothy, Stanley and last of all Paul born in 1919. By the time the children were ready for school, the four schools were built. Youngest child Paul would tell the family story saying, "Dad was one of the first here and he helped build the school. Everybody pitched in." The children of John and Alice Smith attended the Green Mountain school riding horseback three miles most of the time. Alice Smith died the winter of 1920 followed by her sons Allen and Dan the following spring of complications from measles. John raised the remaining children by himself. Viola Jones (Perkins) was a classmate of the Smiths as she boarded with her aunt in the teacherage. Ida Jones taught at Green Mountain School in 1924-26 after teaching two years at Big Bend School with a Normal School Degree from Flathead High School. After teaching at Green Mountain Ida married Mr. Grund and moved to Round Butte.

 

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Young Viola Jones helped her aunt, more like a sister, with the janitor work. The young Viola was a bashful newcomer of nine and didn’t say much when others teased her. Viola remembers G. R. Bancroft from 1922-23 and his wife who taught sewing skills. They made "raffia", or straw-like items. Paul Smith remembers the schoolhouse windows were high enough you had to stand up to look out. One day the dogs were barking outside and everyone looked out to see buffalo grazing all around the school. Students had to stay until 5:00 o’clock before they left making it safe enough to go home. For discipline teachers used to "bat you around a bit in those days . . . give you a whippin’." Paul best liked his 1929-30 teacher, Ethel Burton. On nice Fridays at about 2:30 she would take the students on nature hikes. Preacher and school clerk, John Olsen, would fix broken school windows. Lenore Jones Holman (later Merritt) taught the 1930-31 school year. Those attending were Evelyn and Lilly Nelson, Stanley and Paul Smith, John Gottlieb and Herbert Moore. Lenore Holman taught again the next year with John, Stanley, Paul, and Lilly and her son Joe Holman joined them.
 

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For high school, Paul boarded with his sister in Dayton and rode the bus which was partitioned down the middle with girls on one side and boys on the other. Then Mr. Smith rented a place in Polson for the Smith boys to "batch in" while going to school. "On most weekends Dad and Bjorges shared getting us to and from town. We were scared to death of those town kids!" Freshman initiation was both scarey and embarrassing as he had to wear backwards long johns standing in front of the class and sing "Reuben, Reuben, I Been Thinking." Paul remembers being sent to the high school principal and having to write a "big long theme of 500 words on What done wrong and what done right." The farm boy missed living at home and his livestock. Sometimes the boys wouldn’t get home for two or three weeks, especially in winter. Other times they "thumbed a ride home" from neighbors in their Model T’s. Occasionally they walked the three to four hour trip to get home to their family. Paul Smith and his wife, Donna Bowman, were married on September 27, 1959. They raised their children and sent them to school in Polson while living on the original homestead until Paul’s death at age 80 on May 3, 1999. Paul spent his whole life on the ranch and died in the home where he was born.