Santa Fe Consolidated High School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Santa Fe Consolidated High School out in Galveston County. Now, sometimes a school building is just a building. And then sometimes it's the whole story of a community coming together, brick by brick, and this one leans hard toward the latter.

Back in 1927, three separate schools, Arcadia, Alta Loma, and Algoa, decided they were stronger together. They combined to form the Santa Fe Consolidated school district. Named, the marker tells us, for the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroad, the very line that linked those towns to one another.

So you had a railroad stitching communities together, and those communities responded by stitching their schools together. The very next year, 1928, they brought in an architect named Harry D. Payne to design a proper high school for this new consolidated district.

Now, here's a detail I appreciate: they didn't plant the school in one town or the other. They put it about halfway between Arcadia and Alta Loma. That is a diplomatic solution if I ever heard one.

They passed a bond for forty-two thousand dollars and broke ground. What went up was something worth looking at. Spanish Colonial style, clay tile roof, brick exterior, decorative door surrounds.

Six rooms, and a combination auditorium and library, designed to hold a hundred and seventy-five students. On October 22, 1928, the doors opened. And those doors stayed open as the district's high school all the way through 1959.

Thirty-one years of graduations, assemblies, and whatever else happens in a building that three towns built together on common ground.

What the marker says

In 1927, Arcadia, Alta Loma and Algoa schools combined to form the Santa Fe Consolidated school district, named for the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroad which linked the towns. Architect Harry D. Payne designed a new high school for the district in 1928, to be built about halfway between Arcadia and Alta Loma. With a bond of $42,000, work on the school began. The Spanish Colonial style building features a clay tile roof, brick exterior, and decorative door surrounds. Six rooms and a combination auditorium and library were planned for 175 students. The new school opened on Oct. 22, 1928, and served as the district’s high school until 1959.