Lanham Mill Schoolhouse - Glen Rose, TX
N 32° 14.050 W 097° 45.114
14S E 617592 N 3567074
The old one-room schoolhouse from the Lanham Mill community has been preserved at Paluxy Heritage Park, Glen Rose, TX
Waymark Code: WM121ZE
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 02/05/2020
Views: 3
A historical marker placed by the Somervell County Historical Commission provides some history:
Built in 1901 by residents of the Lanham Mill School District, about five miles from Glen Rose. Ed and Ollie (Lanham) Martin donated the land upon which it sat for seventy years. It stood on the high bank of the Paluxy River above the popular swimmin' spot called 'Blue Hole,' now in Dinosaur Valley State Park. The building doubled as a church and community center. Emmett and Elsie McFall, local farmers, rescued the building in the early 1960s. Not wanting the building to be torn down, the McFalls bought and moved it to their farm on the Paluxy River, one mile from its original site. Time has been kind to this little building. In 2002 Emmett and Elsie's grandson Robert C. McFall, Johnson County Commissioner, and his family donated it to Somervell County to be preserved. He attended church in the building as a child and his father Jacob McFall attended school in the building. The Somervell County Historical Commission dedicates this preservation to his grandparents Emmett and Elsie McFall.
A Texas Historical Marker at the Lanham Mill Cemetery notes that the school had closed by 1947. Laurie E. Jasinski's "Dinosaur Highway: A History of Dinosaur Valley State Park", has some reminiscences from Novella Wilson, who lived in the community and who wrote a book about it. The school served eight grades, and the teacher would live with a family in the community. The school also served as a community center and church building, both during and after its use as an educational center, and a stipulation of Mr. McFall's donation of the schoohouse was that Somervell County would always maintain it, and on occasion throughout the year that they have a day where the local kids could attend school here and have an experience of what education was like before calculators and computers.