The winds of time and some illegal trespassers have not been kind to the once useful little white structure north of Cheyenne, where ranch children in the early 1900s took out their school readers and stood in competition for spelling bees.
The long and narrow building along the dirt road 15 miles north of the city limits sits on private property. It is collapsed in the middle, and the windows are gone but if the walls could talk, there would be memories of a schoolteacher’s secret revealed, Santa handing out treats and summer Bible stories.
Both rancher Shirley Holmes Churchill, 67, whose father purchased the property years ago, and her cousin, Buck Holmes, 84, recall the schoolhouse's importance to the community as locals gathered there for monthly Farm Bureau meetings, to vote during elections and to hold holiday celebrations with two kinds of soup.
Churchill said her father, Floyd Holmes, was born in 1921 on his family’s homestead in an area called the “Divide” about 5 miles east of the family’s current ranch.
He attended school in the old building as soon as he became old enough.
“I think from the very first grade,” she said. “It was called the Goggin School.”
Churchill has a family photo of her dad and his sister sitting on their ponies ready to head to school on their first day.
Buck Holmes said his understanding from the old days is that a school building like the Goggin School was constructed in the center of maybe a 2 or 3-mile radius that had at least four or five children to attend school.
If those children moved or headed for high school and the need was gone, the building would be put on logs and hauled by horses to the next location where it would be useful.
He said the Goggin School structure is actually two buildings that were put together.
Spelling Competitor
While his father, Keith, was too old to attend Goggin School when the family moved to that area, he said he knows that his Aunt Katherine Holmes did.
The Cheyenne State Leader on May 17, 1926, carried a story ofa spelling bee competition that mentions a four-hour “grilling” of 25 students. Katherine Holmes, of Goggin School in District 2, placed third.
Another schoolmate from that time was Robert Paul Bixby. His obituary at the Widerspahn Radomsky Chapel of the Chimes in Cheyenne after his death at 101 on Sept. 10, 2022, referenced his time walking from the family homestead “to the Goggin School about a mile away.”
Churchill recalled a story her father passed down about a teacher. The young woman apparently had been staying with her dad’s family and had become engaged. In those days, teachers were not allowed to be married.
“Somehow my dad knew that she was engaged, and he proceeded to announce it to everybody,” Churchill said. “She was really devastated.”
An article in the June 11, 1926, Cheyenne State Leader mentions the Goggin School as being consolidated and standardized with the rest of the district.
A “Miss Anna M. Dobbin,” the county superintendent of schools, told the paper that to be standardized the school had to meet specific criteria such as a floor space per pupil, natural light from the left of the pupils’ seats, books approved by the state Department of Education and at least one musical instrument.
“The school must have playground equipment and supervised play,” the newspaper reported. “And the teacher must have a grade A certificate.”
Born in 1941, Holmes said he remembers the area surrounding the school as being much more populated when he was a boy. He said neither he nor his sister, born in 1938, attended the school. They were bussed into Cheyenne.
Farm Bureau And Bible School
He estimated that the building probably stopped functioning as a school during the early years of World War II.
Both Churchill and Holmes remember the building as a place for monthly Farm Bureau meetings. It also was a voting precinct and for two weeks each summer for several years it served as the location of a Vacation Bible School as they grew up.
“I went to Bible school there until I was 14 or 15,” Holmes said. “One of the things they had in Bible school was flannel boards and they would have the various biblical characters made of flannel, and it was kind of like a magnet sticking to metal. I would guess they had Bible school there until sometime in the early ’60s.”
Holmes and Churchill also remember the Goggin Farm Bureau Christmas gatherings. There were about 20 families who were part of the group.
Keith Holmes, Buck’s father, is shown in an old home movie they possess. In it he is moving around the building handing out packets to children that usually contained old fashioned candy canes, and apple or other treats, he said. Holmes said his grandfather was the Santa Claus before his dad assumed the role.
Churchill said she still has books that were used for her and other children to recite poems or do little plays for the Christmas gathering. She also recalls 4-H meetings at the site.
A story from the Farm Bureau meetings that Holmes recalls involved a woman who apparently often wanted her suggestions heard and who “complained” in the winter about the building’s temperature. Holmes said she instructed his dad, who was the local Farm Bureau leader at the time, that someone ought to arrive early and fire up the wood stove so the temperature inside the building would be more comfortable for the meeting.
“So, my dad said, ‘Yes, that’s a good idea, I am going to appoint you and (her husband) and you can be the people that come to start the fires to warm the schoolhouse up,” Holmes recalled.
During its school and community building era, the building was augmented with two outhouses on the west side of the building, one for the women on the south and one for the men on the north side of the structure.
The old Goggin School is now collapsed along a road north of Cheyenne. (Courtesy: Will Brackett) 
The old Goggin School is now collapsed along a road north of Cheyenne. (Courtesy: Will Brackett)
Going Private
Holmes estimates the building stopped being used for the community gatherings in the late 50s or possibly early 1960s.
Churchill said she can’t recall the exact time frame her dad purchased the property, but over the years they used the building to house protein pellets for their cattle. It sits next to a calving shed on the ranch.
One of the things that remained from its community building time was a canvas curtain that could be raised and lowered make separate rooms in the building. The canvas contained old advertisements of various Cheyenne businesses including one for the Arp & Hammond Hardware Company owned by the family of current Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis.
About four years ago, the building was vandalized and all the windows broken out, Churchill said. More recently, a windstorm, with winds whipping into the building collapsed the roof and the building has fallen into itself.
As Churchill ponders the future of the building, she asks that people respect that the property remains on ranch land and that they should not trespass.
“We used to keep it locked and everything and people were way more respectful of private property,” she said.
Video courtesy: Shirley Holmes Churchill
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
