Keeping track of numbers in local school districts

There were no high school grades in Monument until 1917, when a teacher was hired to teach 9th and 10th grades.

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Though no math wiz, I have a pretty good head for numbers, and a strong background in history. The local districts are a challenge to me, however.

"While General William Jackson Palmer was busy developing Colorado Springs, ranchers and farmers homesteading in Douglass, Pine, and Woodmen Valleys were busy organizing the twentieth school district in El Paso County. The new district, established in 1874, two years before Colorado became a state, consisted of 36 square miles. Children met in homes for their education until 1886 when the first school in the district opened in the community of Edgerton that was located at the confluence of Monument and West Monument Creeks. Typical of a one-room rural school, it featured an entryway where coats and lunches were stored, a podium in the front of the classroom for the teacher’s desk, and a potbellied stove in the middle of the room. The district’s first bus barn was the four-horse shed located on the back of the property. Stories abound of this first school of bullets fired by deer hunters flying through the school, of children fishing in Monument Creek during lunch and recess, and of the County Superintendent arriving by train that stopped on the tracks below the school," according to info from Academy District 20.
Different stories circulate, however, of the naming designation of District 38.
"The history of education in the Black Forest parallels that of the original District 20. This area became a part of the original thirty-eighth district in El Paso County organized in 1888. The old Black Forest log school located on the corner of Shoup and Black Forest Roads has been preserved as a reminder of that past," according to District 20's web site.
"The one-room schools in both District Twenty and District Thirty-Eight in Black Forest served students in grades one through six. Secondary students were bussed to schools in outlying districts. This was not a satisfactory situation for the patrons of the districts who wanted the highest quality of education for their children. The solution to the educational needs of these two communities came in the early 1950s when the United States Air Force purchased the 18,500 acres of land that would become the Air Force Academy. The 1957 consolidation of Woodmen District Twenty, the Black Forest, and the Air Force Academy increased the size of the rural District Twenty from 36 to 130 square miles and provided the funds to build the district’s first high school."
District Twenty existed for over twenty years with one high school, one junior high, and up to six elementary schools. The decade of the 1980s brought the district’s major building boom, with the addition of two high schools, two middle schools, and five elementary schools. Nine new schools were added in the 1990s and seven were added between 2000 and 2010," says Academy District 20.
The numbers story seems to differ slightly according to District 38.
"The original Monument School District #5 was founded August 20, 1874, and was called, “The Lewis School District.” School was held in several one-room schoolhouses. This school served 1st through 8th grades. There were no high school grades in Monument until 1917, when a teacher was hired to teach 9th and 10th grades. The latest school house was moved south of the Village Inn, off Interstate-25 in Monument, (former Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce building.)
"Palmer Lake School began in the late 1800s and was housed in several one-room schoolhouses. Those buildings are still in existence and currently have been remodeled as residences in the town of Palmer Lake. This school also served 1st through 8th grades only," the District 38 site says.
"In 1921, the Inez Johnson Lewis School had one graduate, Bernice Ingersoll. In 1922, the high school was accredited. Donald McKay, who was the district's superintendent as well as principal and math teacher, was credited with helping to get the high school accredited. The school used gas lights because there was no electricity in Monument at the time. To be accredited, the school had to have electricity, and Mr. McKay was instrumental in getting electricity to the school," District 38's history records.
"Palmer Lake School District #33 paid tuition for their high school students to attend the new high school in Monument. In 1935, Palmer Lake built a new elementary school at 115 Upper Glenway. Since then, there have been three additions to the Palmer Lake Elementary School. The school has served elementary students since its inception, with the exception of 1980-1985, when it closed and all elementary students attended classes at the facility on Lake Woodmoor Drive. In 1986, Palmer Lake Elementary was renovated and reopened for elementary students. The latest addition took place in 1992 when the new cafeteria was added," according to a District 38 history.
"On July 28, 1948, Palmer Lake School District #33 and Lewis Consolidated School District #5 of Monument voted to merge. At this election, it was decided to give the combined districts a new number by adding 33 and 5. Thus, the district became #38 and was renamed "The Lewis-Palmer Consolidated Schools." 
A new high school was built at 66 Jefferson Street in Monument in 1957. It continued to serve as the district's high school until 1980, when Lewis-Palmer High School opened at 1300 Higby Road in South Woodmoor. 
In 1973, Lewis-Palmer Elementary School opened at 1315 Lake Woodmoor Drive as a middle school for grades 4-8. It wasn't until 1980, with the opening of a new high school and the transfer of grades 6-8 to the former high school site, that Lewis-Palmer Elementary School served students in grades K-5. Prior to that time, K-3 elementary students went to school at the Palmer Lake facility. 
In 1980, the old high school became the middle school and continued as that until Lewis-Palmer Middle School opened in 1994 at 1776 Woodmoor Drive. In 1995, after considerable remodeling and renovation, Grace Best Elementary School opened in the old high school and middle school facility at 66 Jefferson Street in Monument as the district's fourth elementary school. 
Another District 38 school, Kilmer Elementary School opened in 1988 at 4285 Walker Road, east of Highway 83, to accommodate the growth in the eastern part of the district. However, until numbers increased in that area, students from the Monument area were bused to that facility for school. Kilmer grew to nearly 600 students with the addition of three portables in the 2000-2001 school year.  
In June of 1998, the original Pine Grove one-room school was donated by the landowners to Kilmer Elementary. The school was once located just north of Hwy. 83 on Palmer Divide/ County Line Road. An El Paso County family donated the land and a Douglas County family donated a bunkhouse for the building which was refurbished by the families into Pine Grove School. The school opened full time in the fall of 1913. Thanks to the help and donations of Kilmer families, Pine Grove was moved and restored to its original appearance where children can still learn within her walls.
To confuse things a little more, at the time of this writing, Ray Kilmer, the namesake of Kilmer Elementary, lived down the block from me... In District 20.

Photo Information: 
1: Monument Elementary School, Class of 1916
2: First Palmer Lake School
3: Inez J. Lewis School, 1928.
4:Monument's first school, just north of Dirty Woman Creek.
5: Monument School 8th Grade, 1925-26 

Murdered mysteriously, brutally, viciously

No one is really sure what happened at the house and in the stable near the vanished town of Edgerton

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Edgerton was once a bustling little village on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad about nine miles north of Colorado Springs (near the present location of Ice Lake at the United States Air Force Academy.) It took its name from one David Edgerton who homesteaded there in 1872. Nearly 350 people called the place home by the turn of the century. There was the railroad platform, V.C. Lewis Hotel, a general store that also served as the post office and was operated by W.M. Smith, a doctor’s office, and even the Cascade Ice Company that cut ice from three reservoirs on the stone damned west fork of Monument Creek. For the most part, it was peaceful haven for ‘lungers’ and farmers, ice cutters, railroad workers and their families.
That is why news of two murders, an elderly woman and her young grandson, on a ranch two miles northwest of the Edgerton post office, was such a shock when reported in the Colorado Springs Gazette on April 29, 1888. Not only murdered, but mysteriously, brutally, and viciously.
Neighbor, S.K. Harris, and Mrs. Kearney’s daughter, a Mrs. Beach of St. Louis, discovered the victims, Mrs. M.J. Kearney and her eight-year-old grandson, little Jimmy Hand. The daughter and the neighbor had been alerted by other neighbors that perhaps something was wrong. Mrs. Beach had traveled here from Missouri after a telegram addressed to her mother, Mrs. Kearney, was undeliverable. The telegram messenger, from Husted, which was the nearest station, found all the doors at the ranch locked and no sign of any recent activity. The neighbor and the daughter decided to go see for themselves what was going on the morning of April 28.
“That afternoon they proceeded to the ranch where they found all the doors locked, strange to say, from the inside,” wrote Carl F. Mathews, in a historical paper called “Unsolved Crimes of the Pikes Peak Region,” in March of 1962. Mathews was a noted historian with the Denver Westerners and a 32-year veteran of the Bureau of Identification with the Colorado Springs Police Department. “Forcing one of the doors, they found Mrs. Kearney’s hat, bonnet and cloak in one room and on the kitchen table two pans of biscuits and some pies ready to place in the oven. A more complete examination resulted in finding two sets of dirty dishes, consisting of three plates each. One set had been used for a meal and set aside; the other on the table apparently used.”
Finding nothing more in the house they continued to search the surrounding ranch buildings.
“They went to a small stable near the house, where they made a horrible and ghastly discovery. In one corner of the little grain room was the body of Mrs. Kearney in an advanced state of decomposition, and the examination of a grain box in another corner disclosed the body of the little boy. So small was the box that one foot was left protruding. His body was not badly decomposed and blood could plainly be seen on the neck, evidently from a wound,” wrote Mathews.
“On May 1st, Coroner Davis, in company of Dr. S.A. Fisk of Denver, a friend of the family, reached the premises and it was found necessary to drag the body of Mrs. Kearney from its position in order to examine it closely. Buried in the right side of the skull was the head of a hatchet with a newly whittled handle about two feet long. Examination of the body of the little boy led Dr. Fisk to believe he had been shot but the coroner found a large gash on the side of the forehead about three inches in length, cause by the sharp edge of the hatchet.”
The police at the time followed several leads and developed a number of theories and possible suspects.
The hatchet was found about three years previous by W.H. Thompson, who had given it to a Mr. Haliday, who at one time rented the ranch.
“Thompson’s cabin was only a few hundred yards from Mrs. Kearney’s house; he cut kindling wood for her, did her chores and carried her mail from the post office for a long time,” noted Mathews in his 1962 paper. “Thompson loved his whiskey and about June 1st came to Colorado City, became drunk and was arrested. On the expiration of his sentence he became intoxicated again and while in jail let fall a word or two conveying the impression that he knew more about the murder than had been told. In one of the saloons he stated in the presence of four witnesses: ‘I killed Mrs. Kearney but I did not kill the boy.’ A preliminary hearing was held on July 24th and twice continued to July 27th, at which time Justice Gorman could find nothing to warrant holding him for trial, so he was accordingly released.”
Other possible scenarios that were suggested but never wrapped up in the form of convictions or even arrests were that the killer was a transient woodcutter hired by Mrs. Kearney, or perhaps a man she had arrested and tried for theft about three years prior to the murder, or perhaps a vagrant wandering through, that supposed she had large amounts of money stashed.
To date, no one is really sure what happened at the house and in the stable located in a deep gulch, two miles northwest of the vanished town of Edgerton. Even the roof of the lonely outpost could barely be seen from the road, and the nearest neighbor was largely considered the prime suspect. The brutal hatchet murder of the elderly Mrs. Kearney and little Jimmy Hand has never been solved.
###