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May 13, 2008 4:09 pm US/Pacific
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Off The Beaten Path: School Giveaway
ALTAVILLE (CBS13) ―
It's been abandoned, then moved, then restored. Now I say one of Northern California's oldest schools is on another journey.
In the tiny town of Altaville, there's an even tinier grammar school. History has it that when the town needed a new school, the residents held a dance, collected donations and built this one room brick structure.
Thousands of students attended classes here in the almost one hundred years it was open.
This school was built in 1858. Now state records are a little sketchy but that makes it among the oldest schools in California.
The school was finally replaced with a new one in 1950. The old school was moved to a new location and restored in the 1980s. Ryan Callahan lives next door and some of his family members attended class here.
When the town of Altaville was annexed to the city of Angels Camp in the 1970s, the school was pretty much to the county historical society, and along with it, the bill to maintain and protect the building. Now the county says it can't afford that couple of hundred dollars a month, so it wants to give the school to the city of Angels Camp. City manager Tim Shearer says, great.
"There are a few minor repairs that need to be done, overall, it's an outstanding restoration of the schoolhouse. When you are preserving history there are always some costs associated with it but its well worth the money," he says.
When the school transfers hands this summer, Angels Camp plans a marketing campaign to get more visitors to the school and the town. Former students are supporting that effort like Paul Raggio.
"There's a lot of historical value there and I hope we can hang on to it for another hundred years," says Paul.
Now maybe some of the artifacts in the back room of this school will get dusted off and put on display in what may be Northern California's oldest school house.
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