Arney School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Arney School, out in Castro County. Now, every good community out on the Texas High Plains starts with somebody showing up, and in the northeast corner of Castro County, the somebodies who showed up were two brothers out of Missouri. George and Jim Arney.

They came, they settled, and apparently they made enough of an impression that the community took their name. That's the Arney community, and that's where our story lives. In 1901, somebody looked around at all the children of settlers and ranch hands scattered across that flat and windswept land and decided those kids needed a school.

So a school was started. One room. A frame structure.

Now, out here on the plains, you build something, you use it for everything you've got. That one little schoolhouse didn't just hold lessons. It held souls, too, because in 1905 the Arney Baptist Church was organized inside those same four walls.

One building carryin' the weight of a whole community's future and its faith at the same time. The school kept on running, year after year, decade after decade, all the way to 1953. That's when it was consolidated with other districts.

But here's what I like about this story. The building didn't go dark. It didn't sit empty and forgotten out on the prairie.

It turned itself into a community center, a polling place, a spot where people still gathered. George and Jim Arney came out of Missouri, gave a community their name, and that community found a way to keep the lights on long after the school bell stopped ringing.

What the marker says

Among the early settlers in northeast Castro County were George and Jim Arney, two brothers from Missouri, for whom Arney community was named. A school was started in 1901 for the children of settlers and ranch hands. The first schoolhouse, a one-room frame structure, also housed services of Arney Baptist Church, which was organized in 1905. Arney School operated until 1953, when it was consolidated with other districts. The school building then served as a community center and polling place. (1985)