Fruita's one-room log schoolhouse stands beside Highway 24 with its own small parking area, and visitors look in through the windows at a furnished classroom. Most sources date it to 1896, though an older nomination says as early as 1892, and it closed in 1941. It held school through the week and doubled as the settlement's meeting place for dances and Sunday School. A teacher hired in 1934 left a frank account of the job, at 57 dollars a month, boarding with a local family, with no electricity or indoor plumbing, mud falling from between the logs, and only a few ragged books. The building is wheelchair accessible. Highway 24 was laid past its door in 1962, which is why the old school now sits so close to the traffic.
Right now on your left, Fruita's one-room school, eighteen ninety-six to nineteen forty-one. Look in through the windows. Nettie Behunin taught Fruita's children before it stood, when she was only a girl. At dances the band stayed inside and most of the dancing went out under the cliffs. One teacher found a dead snake on her chair.
Photo: NPS · Public domain (U.S. Government work)