Site of Valley View School, Site of

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Valley View School site, out here in Morris County, Texas. Now, picture this. The year is 1893, and Morris County is being carved up into school districts.

Every corner of that county getting its own little piece of the map, its own little claim to learning. And this part of the county, right here, fell into what they called the Valley View District. Somebody had to step up and give that district somewhere to stand, and that somebody, well, that was B. and R.

E. Fomby. Those two donated three and a half acres of land right at this very site.

Three and a half acres, and with it, a promise that the children of this community were going to get their schooling. Now here's the part that tickles me. They didn't build a brand new schoolhouse.

No, they moved one. A one-room school building, picked up and brought over from a nearby place called Snow Hill, set down on the Fomby land like it had always meant to be there. One room.

All those children, all those grades, all those lessons, packed into one room. Then, somewhere in the early nineteen hundreds, somebody said, we need more space. A second room got added.

And later, that whole building got replaced with another one entirely. The school kept runnin', kept teachin' kids through the eighth grade. After that, students made the trip to Daingerfield High School to finish out their education.

Valley View wasn't the end of the road, just the beginning of it. The school held on until 1935, when it finally closed its doors. Then, in 1952, the district itself was annexed to the Daingerfield Independent School District.

Two dates that close out a chapter. But here's what the marker wants you to carry with you down this road. That little school, one room turned to two, moved from Snow Hill, standing on donated land, is a reminder of what rural education looked like in Texas.

Not grand, not glamorous, but present. And for the children who walked through those doors, that presence meant everything.

What the marker says

When Morris County was divided into school districts in 1893, this part of the county was included in the Valley View District. B. and R. E. Fomby donated 3.5 acres of land at this site for a schoolhouse, and a one-room school building was moved to the property from nearby Snow Hill. A second room was added in the early 1900s and later was replaced with another building. Students attended classes through the eighth grade at Valley View and went to Daingerfield High School to complete their education. Valley View closed in 1935 and the district was annexed to the Daingerfield Independent School District in 1952, but its history is a reminder of rural education in Texas. (2001)