How do you move a 148-year-old schoolhouse from Wilmot Elementary School to Marshdale Park? Very, very carefully.
You might even say one inch at a time.
A Parker company specializing in moving historic buildings used hand-jacks to painstakingly inch Buffalo Park School from its concrete foundation in front of Wilmot Elementary on May 19, moving it onto a trailer and driving it about 4.5 miles to its new location on May 21 where movers slowly lowered the building onto a new concrete slab.
The historic one-room log Buffalo Park School has deteriorated and the Evergreen Mountain Area Historical Society and Evergreen historian John Steinle have been looking for a new location for several years, so the area doesn’t lose this piece of history.
Steinle believes the Buffalo Park School is the oldest and last remaining one-room school structure built of logs in Jefferson County and perhaps the oldest in Colorado.
“I am a very very happy man,” said Steinle, who spent May 21 watching the move. “Personally, this is a culmination of … trying to make sure the school would be preserved, and it would be moved to a new location where it can be used as an educational tool.”
He called the groups who joined together to bring the move to fruition a great community effort, something typical for Evergreen.
“It will be a great asset as it was in the past to the Evergreen community,” Steinle said.
Takes a village
Since 1967 – when the schoolhouse was moved to Wilmot Elementary – and until about 10 years ago, school groups entered the building regularly to learn about Evergreen history.
The schoolhouse move took a village — the Evergreen Park & Recreation District agreeing to take over ownership of the building from Jeffco Public Schools and pouring a concrete slab at Marshdale Park; EMAHS using grant money to pay for the move; and Steinle working with all parties to make it happen.
Plus the Jeffco County Historical Commission and History Jeffco preservation group had a hand in making the move a reality.
Now that the building has its new home, it will take a village to raise the additional funds to renovate the building. The Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce, the Evergreen Legacy Fund, History Jeffco plus EMAHS and EPRD have offered to help with the renovations.
EPRD hopes to open the building for educational programs for school groups and the public.
“I’m excited to bring that back,” EPRD Executive Director Cory Vander Veen said. “We can get people learning about the history (of Evergreen) and do some programming.”
How to move a historic building
The Buffalo Park School, which had rotting wood at the bottom of the 15-foot by 20-foot building, was lifted ever so slowly by Mammoth Structural Moving workers, using jacks that they wedged under the building’s four corners.
Workers hand-jacked up the walls inch by inch in unison, so they could place steel beams under the building. The first day, workers lifted the schoolhouse about 12 inches. The second day, they lifted it so they could put a trailer under it, and on the third day, they drove the school to Marshdale Park and gingerly lowered it onto its new cement pad.
About a dozen people, including Steinle, EMAHS and EPRD representatives watched the building come to rest in Marshdale Park.
“Our first challenge is to keep (the building) from falling apart,” said Bill Davis, Mammoth’s founder and owner. “Jacking up the building is really simple. Keeping it together is what is complicated.”
Davis said his company moves buildings of all sizes, and a one-room building such as Buffalo Park School might seem simple, but it’s not.
Other details
Discussions to determine what to do with the building started in earnest in 2019, according to Stuart Collins, EMAHS president. But it wasn’t until 2022 that EPRD said it would assume responsibility for the building.
Nancy Judge, president of the Evergreen chamber, said the chamber got involved because the school is about the same age as Evergreen, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
“The schoolhouse is part of the history of Evergreen, and we want to honor that and learn from it,” Judge said. “We want to move it, give it a new home and give it some TLC.”
Collins said hopes the money can be raised to replace the roof and windows, and to refurbish the building.
Many involved with the project thought it wouldn’t happen.
“This is great,” Collins said. “Now we have a financially secure entity – the Evergreen Park & Recreation District – taking care of it. Now we will put labor into restoration. The goal is to have a ribbon cutting by Aug. 1 next year and celebrate its opening.”
History of Buffalo Park School
Steinle has written a history of the building, telling how it came to be and was moved around Evergreen.
According to Steinle’s history, several families within the newly named Evergreen community joined forces in 1877 to build a school for their children. Antoine Roy and Selim Vezina, members of several French-Canadian families living in the area, constructed the Buffalo Park School at the Vezina ranch.
The land on which the school stood was leased by Jefferson County School District 11. There were eight boys and 15 girls: 23 students and their teacher crammed into the 10- by 15-foot building. The constant disappearance of the students’ pencils caused consternation until the culprit was discovered: a pack rat that had been adding pencils to his nest.
When a larger school was built along Cub Creek in the 1920s, the Buffalo Park School was no longer necessary, and it closed. The old school building was cared for by the Vezina family, but the ranch was sold in 1948. At that time, Carrie Riel Vezina had the building dismantled and moved to her new home on Evergreen Hill.
By 1966, Vezina wanted to sell her property and was concerned about the school’s future. She was a longtime member of the Evergreen Woman’s Club, and in 1967, the club assumed ownership, moving the schoolhouse first to the Evergreen High School grounds and then to Wilmot Elementary School.
The club assumed responsibility for maintaining the building, and Wilmot teachers used it as a learning environment for decades. Volunteers from Hiwan Homestead Museum also taught using 19th-century methods.
In 1987, the Evergreen Woman’s Club had the building renovated and repaired. By 2010, the Woman’s Club disbanded and turned over ownership and responsibility for the school to Jeffco Public Schools.
Since the 1987 renovation, the condition of the old school has deteriorated, and the school district was no longer able to adequately care for it.
In 2019, the school district contacted the Evergreen Mountain Area Historical Society to form a renovation plan. EMAHS board members and representatives from the Jefferson County Historical Commission and other groups met at the school to evaluate its condition.
HistoriCorps, a national volunteer preservation organization, was brought in to examine the school and formulate a renovation plan and budget. However, the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted everything and put the preservation effort on hold.