1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY 605
came eventually, the Central School bein^" built in 1894, at a cost of
$14,000. In 1896, another was built, the Franklin, at a cost of $1,500.
It was enlarged in 1904, at a cost of $1,000. The Primary building
was erected in 1898, and the Homestead in 1903 ; the former cost
$7,000, and the latter only $500. The Homestead School was of logs,
and was built in an outlying agricultural section. Finnish farmers
constituted that small sub-district, but their children had to be provided
with the means of education, and it was quite impossible
to transport them to the Virginia schools. There were no roads,
and when Judge Bliss, then district superintendent, visited the
school, he had to go on horseback, or on a sled. By the way, the
first teacherage put into operation on the range was at the Homestead
School, the teacher finding it just as difficult to get to and from Virginia
as other people, of course, and therefore, having no option but
to remain near her school. But that little school ultimately gave a
^^^SBi^
VIRGINIA TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL. (AN IMMENSE VOCATIONAL
SCHOOL BUILDING HAS SINCE BEEN BUILT IN REAR, ADJOINING)
good demonstration of the value of the public schools in the Americanizing
of the alien population. Nine out of ten of the pupils, probably,
spoke only Finnish when they first entered the. log schoolhouse ;
in eight years, it had a class ready for high school—a class of bright,
apt and promising Americans. Judge Bliss, who never took a vacation
while he was superintendent, was especially interested in the
evolution of the foreign element into citizens of good American spirit,
and instituted several unif|ue ways of effecting that purpose through
the pupils of the Virginia schools, and by the establishment of night
schools. Virginia was the first to start such work on the range.
In 1904 the Roosevelt School building was erected, at a cost of
$65,000, and it became the High school. Then came the Johnson and
Farmstead schools in 1907, and the Higgins in 1908; the Technical
High, Northside and Southside schools, in 1909. A larger school
became necessary on the Southside in 1915, and was then built, at a
cost of $55,000. An ai)praisal of the school property of the \'irginia
district, made in 1914, showed the total valuation of real estate to
be $167,200; of buildings, $468,000; of eiiuipnu-nt, $89,244; of text
Vol. II—
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