District: No. 75
Location Relative to Con. 8: 5.5 miles West, 7.0 miles North
Year of District Formation: 1901-1902
Teachers
Howard Rice
Ed Campbell (1916)
Earnest Jackson (1917)
Lela Barton (1914)
Principle
None Listed
School Board
Building
One Room Stone.
According to Balyeat1,2 this school operated with one teacher through 1945-46. Transferred for two years and part was annexed by Con. 8. in 1948.
Mr. Floyd Hand supplied three pages of pictures of Mt. Tepee teachers and students in the period 1912 to 1920 for Vol. 6 of PKC (pp 77-79). The few identifying names that I can make out are not any that I recognize as being involved in Con. 8, but those were very early days. The building is of shaped stone and large for a one room school. The picture for 1916 shows about 37 students. I hope that my survey of alumni may turn up examples of Con. 8 students who began at Mt. Tepee. This school is the only one of the eight mentioned here which was still standing in 2003.
This school is very near to Soldiers Spring School, Dist. No. 33. The 1913 township plats show two schools in this area both identified as School Dist. No. 75. The northernmost of these is Mt. Tepee, and the other is really District 33, shown at the position it was located 1916 until in which year it was relocated about a half mile to the southwest near the spring known as Soldiers Spring.
Sources
1. Pioneering in Kiowa County, v 6, pg 18. This reference refers to the pages 18-39 of that volume, which is titled Kiowa County Schools. The first part is a general history of Kiowa County Schools It is stated in an Editor’s Note that “This History of Kiowa county school was prepared by Frank A. Balyeat, Field Representative, Department of Manuscripts, The University of Oklahoma Library, Norman, Oklahoma. It was researched by Sally Mansell, Hobart, Oklahoma”. Within the text, Dr. Balyeat refers to the time of writing as 1958.
2. History of the Schools of Kiowa County 1901-1958 by Dr. Frank A. Balyeat. I first learned of this from a footnote in the article about Mullins (Pioneering in Kiowa County, v 2, pg 256); but there was no indication of a publisher or whereto find copies. Maggie (Barnes) Walker obtained a copy of it from the Kiowa County Courthouse Files, with the help of Patti Johnson who seems to be able to achieve miracles. My inspection indicates that the material in Pioneering in Kiowa County, v 6 is the same as the original report and not a revised version. There is no indication of to whom the report was made or if it was published. I will give the Pioneering in Kiowa County, v 6 page numbers as that is most accessible published form known to me. This is a scholarly work with a very comprehensive discussion of the early school system. It also contains extensive numerical data. I have not yet been able to determine exactly what all the source documents were. I think that some may be the archives of the County Superintendent’s office.