A white building that once served as a schoolhouse on top of a hill in Valley, Washington has a new home and is nearly ready to be reintroduced to the public.
The Little White Schoolhouse was built in 1916 and relocated four years ago after nearly facing demolition. Now in its new location, the building is on its “inside job” stage, one of the final phases of restoration.
“The great thing about that is once that is done, we can start moving things inside,” said Melissa Silvio, vice president of the Valley Historical Society.
The schoolhouse will become Valley’s first museum and an art gallery. The Valley School District, Valley Historical Society and the local community came together to preserve and restore the building and their history after the building earned an “endangered historic place” nomination by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation in 2017.
“The main goal is to teach our youth our history here,” said George Craig, the restoration assistant director. “And we got so many new people moving into the community also that have no clue what our local history is and why the town was put here.”
Craig and others in Valley attended the schoolhouse in one way or the other — whether it was for a class or even for housing.
“I grew up in Spokane but my grandparents lived here — my grandmother taught in this school,” Craig said. “She taught English.”
“It was actually used at one time too, for housing for the janitors, and, I think at one time, a superintendent in the ‘30s or ‘40s, and then it went back to being a classroom,” Silvio added.
Jesse Klemish said he would attend the little white schoolhouse for grade school.
“I had music here, and then the basement was our locker room. It was called the Eagles Nest,” he said.
Klemish is the co-president of the group and grandson of Jackie Franks, the founder of the Valley Historical Society.
Franks, 93, had also attended the school and started the society back in 2008 to begin working to restore the building. She donated land in 2015 at the fairgrounds so it could be relocated.
“She always had in mind the Little White Schoolhouse being preserved as a museum, even from the beginning,” Silvio told the Spokesman-Review. “So I think that was a big motivation for them starting the Historical Society back then.”
On July 15, 2020, the society successfully moved the schoolhouse to the town's fairgrounds and have been working year round to restore and rebuild parts of the building.
“We just finished the roof. We had a raise-the-roof fundraising campaign that we just finished," said Silvio, who, through outreach, helped to secure $50,000 through grants and donations.
The Valley Historical Society will have the Little White Schoolhouse open to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Aug. 9 and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Aug. 10. Community members can walk in and read through history as well as donate and participate in their raffle.
Monica Carrillo-Casas is a Murrow Fellow from a Washington State University program that places early-career journalists in local newsrooms. Spokane Public Radio and the Spokesman-Review manage and share her content.