Westover School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it right along to you. Half a mile east of where you're rolling right now, there used to be something worth stopping for. The Westover School.

And the story of that school is really the story of a community that built itself up, brick by brick, and then watched the world quietly move on without it. It started in 1910. No dedicated building, no grand ceremony.

Classes just met in the Church of Christ building in Westover. That was enough to get started, and getting started is sometimes the whole trick. The trustees didn't stop there, though.

By 1911, they had put up a proper frame schoolhouse. Kids had a place to call school. But here's the thing about a community that believes in its children.

Six years after that frame building went up, they tore into something bigger. A two-story brick building rose on that site, and it held all eleven grades under one roof. Seven classrooms.

A library. An auditorium. This wasn't a one-room affair out on the prairie.

This was a real institution. And the community filled it. By the 1930s, enrollment had climbed to four hundred students.

Four hundred. Out here in Baylor County. That number says everything about what this place meant to the people living around it.

Then things began to shift, the way they do, slow at first and then all at once. In 1942, the rail line was abandoned. And after World War II, people started leaving rural areas, drawn toward towns and cities, toward whatever was next.

The student population declined. And in 1950, Westover School closed. The two-story brick building, the library, the auditorium, the four hundred students who once filled those halls.

All of it, eventually, given back to memory. Half a mile east. Keep that in mind as you pass.

What the marker says

Westover School One-half mile east of this site is the location of the former Westover School, which served students in this part of Baylor County from 1910 until 1950. School classes first met in the Church of Christ building in Westover until trustees constructed a frame schoolhouse in 1911. Six years later, that building was replaced by a two-story brick building, which held all eleven grades and included seven classrooms, a library and an auditorium. Enrollment reached 400 students by the 1930s, but with abandonment of the rail line in 1942 and the general movement of people from rural areas after World War II, the student population declined, and Westover School closed in 1950. (2002)