History
Early "Columbia County Schools" at Depot Museum
Currently showing at the Dayton Historic Depot is an exhibit of early Columbia County schoolhouses, which runs through October. At one time, in the early 1900s, there were more than 50 operating schools in Columbia County. The exhibit includes photos and artifacts from many of those schools. Some of the items featured in the exhibit include:
• School desks and furniture
• Books that were used for teaching the children
• Class pictures of everyone who attended the schools, sometimes including their horses
• Lists of rules the teachers had to follow
• Children's writing booklets and artist creations
The exhibit also includes information about a project by the Blue Mountain Heritage Society (BMHS) to bring the Smith Hollow schoolhouse into Dayton, restore it to its original form and open it as a museum for people to see what school was like for children back then. Plans are for it to contain actual materials that would normally be found in a schoolhouse. These include children's school work and autograph books that the BMHS has collected over time.
The Dayton Depot operated from 1881 to 1972 as a train station, then was closed and was scheduled to be torn down. Luckily, a group of people in Dayton created the Dayton Historical Depot Society, which claimed the Depot as a historical landmark, saving it from destruction. It was restored and reopened as a museum in 1981. It has been open ever since.
The Depot has about 1,500 people per year grace its halls, and that's only people who sign the guestbook. It attracts many kinds of people with its exhibits: history buffs, along with people who are interested in railroads and people who like historical buildings.
To learn more about the Depot or the early schools exhibit, drop in during open hours and Mary Byrd, the manager and wonderful tour guide for this museum, will be happy to fill you in.
The Depot is located at 2nd and Commercial Streets in Dayton. For more information, call (509) 382-2026, or go to www.daytonhistoricdepoty.org.
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