page_title: Thorp School District
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Thorp School District / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Thorp Grade School, Thorp, Washington (2009)
context_page_description: Thorp School District No. 400 is a public school system based in Thorp, Kittitas County, Washington. It provides fully accredited academic, athletic and award-winning extracurricular programs for all grades K-12, as well as a pre-school program.
  Thorp High School was formally established as a fully accredited institution in 1895, although the Thorp School District itself dates to 1873 and is the oldest continuously operating school system in Kittitas County.
context_section_description: When District No. 9 of Yakima County (Kittitas County was not separated from Yakima County until 1884) was formed, those who petitioned for its creation would have had no way of knowing that they were part of creating the foundation of the Thorp School District, the first public school system in what is now Kittitas County. In July 1873, a letter was sent by W. H. Crockett, on behalf of the local populace around the site of present-day Thorp, to the Yakima County Superintendent of Schools requesting the formation of a school district. From the letters that would follow, it appears that the new district was approved, but almost immediately a group of residents were petitioning to split-off the southern portion of the district.
  A petition to divide Thorp School District No. 9 was received by the Yakima County school superintendent's office on January 11, 1875. Twelve members of Pleasant Grove community, southwest of the current town site of Thorp, asked that the superintendent grant them permission to separate from the Thorp School District.
  The boundaries that would separate the southern section of District No. 9 from its northern neighbor were a point of contention for the next five years. The confusion was settled in January 1880, when Yakima County School Superintendent George W. Parrish, granted the formation of District No. 10 which encompassed the area around Splawn School on Taneum Creek. The formerly southern section of the district around the town site of Thorp reverted to the original District No. 9. It is not entirely clear where classes were conducted during the subsequent decade, however in 1885, then 7-year-old Glen Mason arrived in the Thorp area and recalled that school for District No. 9 was held in a one-room log school on the ranch of Jim McCollough in the upper valley.
  On November 7, 1887, District No. 9 purchased a one-acre parcel of land from William Andrew Forgey near the present-day intersection of Sisters Road (then an extension of Goodwin Road before Interstate 90 cut it off from the town) and Thorp Cemetery Road, and by 1891 a school house had been built there which became known as the Mills School. Constructed of finely fitted and painted shiplap siding, the building was 24-feet wide and 36-feet long with 14-foot high ceilings, making it stand apart from the log school houses that were common in the area.
  When the town of Thorp was officially platted around the Northern Pacific Railroad depot in 1895, residents of Thorp School District No. 9 voted to move the Mills School building a half-mile down Goodwin Road to the newly formed town. The idea of moving the school house, however, was rejected by those who lived in closer proximity to it and a dispute followed. In order to prevent the school house from being moved, the residents around Mills School formed Goodwin School District No. 46, cutting off the town from a school house. The town of Thorp and District No. 9 would go without a proper school house for several more years.
  Not to be thwarted by their adversaries in the upper valley, sometime in 1895 the people of the town of Thorp devised a scheme to move the school down the road to the town site. One night, the men of Thorp secretly entered the Mills School and absconded with the school equipment and necessary accoutrements, transferring them to a room above the dance hall in the town—from that day forward, school has been held at Thorp. When the community built its church, classes moved from the dance hall to the church.
  Then in the spring of 1900, just months before a fresh enrollment of 99 students were to arrive at its doors, the first Thorp school house was completed. Located just a few blocks west of the train depot at the current location of Thorp High School, it was a one-story, two-room structure with a footprint of 46-feet by 50-feet.
  In 1904, Goodwin District No. 46, which had split with the Thorp district just eight years earlier, was reunified with it to form Thorp School District No. 27, becoming the first consolidated school district in Kittitas County.
  In 1912, the original 
caption: Thorp Grade School (Photo 2009)
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