DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I wouldn't change a word. Well — maybe the pacing. McCamey, Upton County.
You're looking at the site of the Old High School, and friend, that name carries more weight than it lets on. Before 1925, there was no school in McCamey. Not one.
Zero students, zero teachers, zero desks. Then the oil boom of the nineteen-twenties hit like a derrick through dry rock, and suddenly twenty students showed up needing somewhere to sit. What they got was a tin shack on 5th Street.
Now, I've heard of humble beginnings, but that right there is humble beginnings with a tin roof. One year. Just one year later, that trickle had become a flood — five hundred and fifty pupils, and nowhere near enough roof to cover them.
So the town did what any self-respecting boomtown does: it improvised. Classes moved into dance halls. Skating rinks.
Two churches. And the desks? Apple crates and orange crates.
You want to talk about doing your homework, you were literally sitting on the produce aisle. By 1927, this building went up — a real building, brick and purpose — and it became something bigger than a school. It was the community's living room.
Weddings were held here. Funerals too, the whole long range of human occasions under one roof. The Draft Board met within these walls.
This place held McCamey together. It served as the high school all the way through 1961. And threading through all of it was the first superintendent, C.
V. Compton, who set high goals for these schools — goals the marker tells us have guided McCamey's schools ever since. From a tin shack and orange crates to a cornerstone of an entire community.
That's not just a school. That's a town finding itself.
What the marker says
Site is "Old High School," an outgrowth of 1920s oil boom. No school existed in McCamey prior to 1925, when 20 students were taught in a tin shack on 5th street. A year later school had 550 pupils in classes held in dance halls, skating rinks and 2 churches. Desks and seats were apple and orange crates. This building, erected in 1927, was community center-- setting for weddings, funerals, meetings of Draft Board, other activities. Used as high school until 1961. First superintendent, C. V. Compton, set high goals-- which since have guided the schools.