Cottonwood School 26

Take Highway 50 west of Emporia for five miles. There just off the highway to the north is a simple wood framed building with white siding and small steeple. The front door faces south to the highway. There is a single entrance and windows on the west side. This is Cottonwood School Number 26.

The tracks of the Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad parallel Highway 50 a mile to the south.The Cottonwood River meanders alongside the railroad tracks.

This is farm land and was so in 1878 when the school was fairly new. Below is an image of a farm from Americus, Kansas taken from the Lyon County Atlas of 1878 and found in Kansas Memories.

Residence of J.W. Loy near Americus, Kansas

If you have gone to the town of Plymouth, Kansas, then you have gone five miles too far.

The Walter M. Anderson Collection of photographs of schools in the and around Emporia contain two older photographs of the school, numbers 13 and 14. The school (Number 26) first appears in print in the Atlas of Lyon County, Township 19, in the Lyons County Atlas of 1878.

Lyons County, Kansas 1878

The school is well taken care of.

Kansas One Room Schoolhouse Lyons County, 1882