The Fourth Ward School - Nevada Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

On November 28, 1876, the excited residents of Virginia City christened their new monument to education, the Fourth Ward School. The town was divided into “wards” for political and fire purposes. Built to honor the nation’s centennial, the majestic four-story building could accommodate over 1000 students, which helped alleviate the serious overcrowding in the eleven other public schools. The new school boasted state-of-the-art heating, ventilation, sanitation systems, curriculum, and teaching practices such as team-teaching.

By the mid-1930s, the other eleven schools were no longer standing and less than 200 students attended the school. The building was in need of repair, and it seemed to be an obsolete relic from another era. A new brick school was built with New Deal funding and the Fourth Ward closed its doors in 1936.

Abandoned to the elements for fifty years, state, federal and private grants rescued the structure and the community reopened the building in 1986 as a museum. As the last school standing of its type, hundreds of thousands of visitors ranging from school groups to foreign tourists have explored this authentically preserved time capsule and exhibits. The Fourth Ward School has become a community cultural center, archives and research center, and a place to connect to people and their stories of the Old West.

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