Clover Pass School - Ketchikan, AK - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

The Clover Pass School is a historic school building in Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Alaska. It is located 16 miles (26 km) north of the city of Ketchikan, at the junction of Potter and Knudson Cove Roads. The small one-room woodframe structure was built in 1947, and was used as a school until 1961. It thereafter was used as a local community center, and is now owned by Historic Ketchikan (although the land on which it sits is owned by the federal government and administered by the United States Bureau of Land Management).

In the 1940s, several local families moved to Clover Pass and took up home sites in the area. At that time, said longtime resident Merta Kiffer in a 1993 oral history interview, the land belonged to the Tongass National Forest and people paid a small fee to the Forest Service, which then allowed them to build on five-acre pieces of property. This was called the Federal Home-site Program.

By 1947 "there were enough families with children at Clover Pass to qualify for a small school," Kiffer said, adding that if a school could be built "the children at least wouldn't have to hike up to the highway and take that long bus ride into town." Back then the narrow dirt "highway" to town was rutted and dangerous and nothing like the North Tongass Highway we know today.

The Clover Pass families got together and petitioned the territory's Independent School District to provide a teacher, said the late Oral Freeman, another longtime Clover Pass resident speaking in a 1993 interview. The Independent School District agreed to pay for a teacher and school supplies if the community would build the schoolhouse.

"And so we did," said Freeman. "We built the Clover Pass School."

The community formed the Clover Pass Workers Group and Freeman credited Reuben McCombs with organizing the group and heading up the work parties. McCombs also drew up the original plans for the school, recalls his widow, Margaret McCombs, of Ketchikan.

In addition to McCombs and Freeman, several other men helped build the school-Henry and Bill Lemke, Fay Bullock, Kit Carson, Cleo Hall and Ken Kiffer. (There may have been others.)

A lot of social life revolved around the building of the school. Snapper Carson's older sister Mary (Carson) Cozens recalls that Trella Bailey, a longtime Clover Pass resident (and mother of Fay Bullock) who lived just north of the school, served large luncheons for the workers and families. Other neighborhood women took turns providing food, running errands, holding bake sales and raffles.

A 1947 "Clover Pass Briefs" column in the Ketchikan Daily News tells about the raffles, which were sponsored by the Clover Pass Workers Group. One raffle was for a "Bendix washing machine" and another for a 14-foot Reinell boat.

The school opened on 2 September 1947, according to the Clover Pass Briefs. Former student Marian (Woolery) Glenz, now of Wrangell, says she and other students had everything they needed: gas and kerosene lanterns for light, an oil stove for heat and a barrel "complete with a dipper" for water. Some of the other families with children in school the first year were the Smiths, Johnsons, Hilberts, Kiffers, Bucheas, Lemkes and Carsons, recalls Mary Cozens, who currently lives in California.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Street address: 105 North Point Higgins Rd Ketchikan, AK USA 99901 County / Borough / Parish: Ketchikan Gateway Borough Year listed: 2005 Historic (Areas of) Significance: Education and community Periods of significance: 1947-1960 Historic function: Education (School) Current function: Community Privately owned?: no Primary Web Site: [Web Link] National Historic Landmark Link: [Web Link] Season start / Season finish: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Secondary Website 1: Not listed Secondary Website 2: Not listed

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