As revealed in personal interviews, periodicals, published and unpublished manuscripts, and school records, the teachers were the key factor in bringing education and culture to the frontier that was western South Dakota. Many teachers were girls of 16 or 17, inexperienced, hired from states to the east (Minnesota and Iowa), sight unseen.…

As late as 1938 there were 200,000 one-room schools scattered throughout the United States. By 1978 there were little more than 1,000 in operation. Primary-source research on rural education has now been conducted by 23 researchers in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, sponsored by the Mountain…

The role of the rural school in southeastern South Dakota from the early days of the frontier to 1981 is examined in this portion of an eight-state research effort to locate and preserve information related to country schools. Three hundred and eleven country schools in 21 southeastern counties are still standing, have been photographed, and are…