A Texas Historical Marker here provides a brief overview:
Fertile farmland and plentiful timber attracted settlers to this part of Denton County about 1870. The community that developed originally was called Toll Town because of two roads that intersected at this point. Schoolteacher Henry Clay Wilmoth suggested the name change to Green Valley. The post office opened in 1874, and there were several stores and a blacksmith shop in the community when the first recorded subscription school for Green Valley children began in a vacant farmhouse in 1878.
Although the community lost a number of residents and businesses when the Texas and Pacific Railroad bypassed it in 1881, the Green Valley public school district was organized as District No. 20 in 1884. Local carpenters Sam Gross and James Mays built a one-room schoolhouse, in which Lutie Whayne was the first teacher. That building burned in 1894, and it was replaced that year at a site about one-half mile north of the first schoolhouse. Green Valley's third school, a new, four-room building, greeted students in 1919.
In 1935 Green Valley School District offered only first through ninth grades, so students traveled to Denton to complete their education. By the time Green Valley School closed in 1949, with Florence Habern as the last teacher, it had provided fine academic and athletic opportunities for several generations of students in this rural area. The 1919 school building continues in use as a community center.
The Green Valley School Historical Society has a complementary history, with more detail: (
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This is the third Green Valley School House. The first was built in 1884, and was designated Green Valley School District #20. It was a small, one room building about twenty feet by thirty feet with two windows on the south and two windows on the north and with but one door on the east end. There were neither doors nor windows the west end of the building. A strip of ceiling about three feet wide was placed across the west end of the building and was painted black to serve as a blackboard. In the early part of 1894, this building was destroyed by fire.
In September 1894, the second Green Valley School Building was erected one-half mile north of the original site. It was an up-to-date frame schoolhouse about sixty feet long and thirty feet wide furnished with excellent desks all new and modern. There was an excellent blackboard with other modern equipment. Later, this building was demolished and the present building was erected in 1919. It was erected on the same plot of ground, but in a different place, just west of where the 1894 school building sat.
It is a large, four-room structure with a large hall running from front to back and a cement porch in front. In each of the four large rooms was a pot-bellied stove fueled by coal. The building is approximately seventy feet long and fifty feet wide.
A deep well was dug on the school grounds, which furnished artesian water via a windmill and overhead tank. Water was carried to the school from the well in two large buckets, one for the boys' side of the building and the other for the girls' side. This method of getting a drink was improved and expanded in later years when each grade was integrated with both boys and girls and water was piped into the building.
There were no in-house bathrooms in any of these early schools. Outdoor toilets called "privies" or "outhouses" were built separately for girls and boys. They sat approximately sixty yards back from the school house on the north and south corners of the school grounds.
Pupils who lived close would walk to school through the fields or down dirt roads. Those who lived further away rode horses or came in horse-drawn buggies or carts. There were always a number of horses tied to the fence posts around the schoolhouse. The boys took care of the girls' horses by unsaddling and removing their harnesses.
From the group of children that emerged from the Green Valley School, they grew up and developed into fine men and women of whom we are all proud. They were upright, honest, and useful citizens. Some of these people acted as school board members, teachers, and preachers, themselves. Some of these people were Christopher Whitlock, Tom Young, Smith Ashley, Jack Brown, Taylor Smith, Quinn Kluttz, A.B. Whitlock, and Charles Bud Owens.
The current Green Valley School was closed in 1949 and the school children were transferred to the Denton Independent School District. The last teacher at the school was Florence Habern, who taught only first and second grades the last two years. Ten grades were taught at the school until 1935, when the reduction of grades started and gradually went down to only two. On July 8, 1949, the Green Valley School District #20 was annexed to the Denton Independent School District. This action closed the history on Green Valley School District #20.