County Line School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it along just the way it was recorded. Back in 1842, a farmer and rancher named John Garrett packed up his family in Arkansas and moved them out to this stretch of East Texas. The land took on his name pretty quick.

People started calling it Garrett's Prairie, or sometimes County Line Prairie. Both names stuck around, which tells you something about how a place remembers the people who came first. Now, fast forward to 1897.

The commissioners got together and established County Line School as Rains County's third district. Why then? Because the original school had burned.

Gone. So a man named Lige Garrett stepped up and designed a brand new two-story building right here at this site. Two stories.

For a little community school out on the prairie, that second floor was practically ambition made out of lumber. And it didn't go to waste. The Woodmen of the World held their meetings up on that second floor for a time.

Meanwhile, downstairs and all around, the school kept growing into something bigger than just a place to learn letters and numbers. Club meetings. Church activities.

Community life, the kind that knits a place together from the inside out. And then there's the County Line New Year's Stew. Started in 1908.

Still going. Think about that for a second. The school building itself is gone now, nothing left of those two stories Lige Garrett drew up.

But the stew? The stew shows up every new year, same as always. Some things a community just decides it isn't done with.

That's the County Line School, a tiny East Texas school that touched a great many lives, and in at least one delicious way, keeps right on doing it.

What the marker says

In 1842, John Garrett, a farmer and rancher from Arkansas, moved his family to this area. It became known as "County Line Prairie" or "Garrett's Prairie." In 1897, commissioners established County Line School as Rains County's third district after the original school burned. Lige Garrett designed a new two-story building at this site. For a time, Woodmen of the World used the second floor for meetings. As the community grew, more functions were held at the school, including club meetings, church activities and other events such as the County Line New Year's Stew, which began in 1908 and continues to this day. Even though the school building is now gone, there were many lives affected by the tiny East Texas school. (2014)