Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 04/07/04
SUMMARY
The Pea Ridge School Complex Historic District in Pea Ridge is composed of three historic buildings; the 1929PeaRidgeSchool, the circa 1928 cafeteria and a decommissioned army building relocated to the site in 1948. The buildings are in good condition and do an excellent job of conveying the town’s educational history. Unfortunately alterations that have occurred to the buildings exclude them from listing on the National Register.
ELABORATION
Professor John Rains Roberts arrived in Buttram’s Chapel near Pea Ridge in 1874. A recent graduate having received his education at Ozark, Missouri, and atAbingdonCollege in Knox County, Illinois, he saw an opportunity to establish an institution of higher education in the area. By the end of 1874 he had established thePeaRidgeAcademy (college) at Buttram’s Chapel.
The PeaRidgeAcademy operated at Buttram’sChapel for five years before closing down for the 1879 term during which time the academy was moved two and one half miles into Pea Ridge proper and a new brick building constructed. Constructed of locally made bricks, Goodspeed's History of Benton County in 1889, described the 1880 structure as being two stories high measuring 24 x 40 feet. Goodspeed’s goes on to say that the school was chartered as an academy with a full course of instruction in 1884, and was also accredited by the University of Arkansas.
Pea Ridge had become the educational center not only for the area, but also for aspiring scholars from across county and state lines. Citizens and organizations banded together to establish and support that educational ideology. In 1884, thePeaRidgeSchool District #109 was approved as a tax supported school. The county court had been approached with a petition requesting approval, with Professor Roberts making the presentation of the petition to the court. A board of directors was in charge of the public school grades, while trustees handled affairs for the college, both of which coexisted in the same building.
Professor Roberts left the college in 1894 and returned to the Springfield, Missouri, vicinity. In 1914 he returned to visit the school he had founded and to take part in the observance of the 40th anniversary of the college.
By 1916, the institution, known locally as "the old PeaRidgeCollege," had evolved into the public-supported educational system known today as the Pea Ridge Public Schools. Gone were the days when students from the three-state area boarded in private homes in Pea Ridge in order to attend college.
The college building was razed in 1929, to make way for the new PeaRidgeSchool. ThePeaRidgeSchool was built using new material and salvageable parts from thePeaRidgeCollege. The new building originally housed all 12 grades and for many years there was only one classroom per grade. By the 1940s the school was becoming overcrowded and solutions to the problem were being sought.
With the end of World War II in 1945 came the daily discharge of thousands of servicemen. This meant that large military bases were no longer needed and cutbacks were being implemented. In 1946 CampCrowder, in Neosho, Missouri, began offering Army barracks free of charge to those who would haul them off. In 1948 a committee of school board members, FFA students and community leaders traveled toCampCrowder to take advantage of this offer and utilize one of these buildings. The men disassembled the building, hauled it to Pea Ridge in pickup trucks and reassembled it for use as a 4th grade classroom.
With the building from CampCrowder and new additions added to each end of the school building in 1952, the complex was able to accommodate the town’s educational needs.The complex was used to educate all age levels of Pea Ridge children until the mid-1960s, when a more modern elementary building was constructed.
The school continued to be used for educational purposes until 2000. At that time the school was left vacant. However, there are plans for the complex. The city plans on moving their offices into part of the complex and utilizing the remaining free space as a community center.
Although students have moved on to modern facilities, the Pea Ridge School Complex remains today as the greatest link to the town’s longstanding educational history. The buildings that occupy the site served area students for over seventy years. The site itself was the educational center in Pea Ridge for one hundred and twenty years dating back to the construction of the PeaRidgeAcademy in 1880. The PeaRidgeSchoolcomplex remains today an integral part of the history of not only education in Pea Ridge, but Pea Ridge itself.
SIGNIFICANCE
The Pea Ridge School Complex Historic District in Pea Ridge is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criterion A with local significance for its association with education in the town of Pea Ridge. Unfortunate alterations that have occurred to the buildings exclude them from the National Register, yet the complex remains a very important part of the town’s history and retains enough integrity to meet eligibility requirements of the Arkansas Register.The nomination is being submitted under the historic context Public Schools in the Arkansas Ozarks, 1920-1940.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Goodspeed's 1889 "History of Benton County" (published by Goodspeed Publishing
Company - reprinted by Benton County Historical Society - August 1989).
History of BentonCounty - BentonCounty Heritage Committee (Published by Curtis
Media Corporation, Dallas, Texas 1991)
Jines, Billie "Benton County Schools That Were" Volumes l, 2 and 3. Volume 1 - 1989;
Volume 2 - 1993; Volume 3 - 1994.