Avalon School (also known as Randlett School)
from Uintah Regional Library History Center
Description
We often think of New Projects as going smoothly, but Avalon School is an exception. The educational situation in the Ouray Valley had stuggled: schools and boarding schools had been built beginning in 1885 for the Uncompahgre Ute people but they were consistently consolidated, closed, and reopened. In 1905 homesteading was allowed in the valley. By 1928 Avalon had been settled and only a few years later (1934) the school board was entertaining a FERA-funded school. Construction began with brick being formed and burned near the property, and men going via sleigh ‘to the mountains’ to get lumber.
In Feb 1935 thirty-six FERA-funded men were working on the school, but late that month a NE wind caused considerable damage filling trenches with snow and sand and requiring that the steel be removed and cleaned. In May 1935 FERA recommended that school construction be discontinued. Activity started again in July and everyone put their nose the grindstone to support the first day of school in September.
By 1957, school consolidation took its toll and students from Avalon School were moved to the W. Russel Todd elementary in Whiterock. Current status of building unknown.
Total cost was $4476.23
Local funding: $1860.65
FERA labor: $2615.58
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(Original in Special Collections)
Avalon Blueprint Front Elevation
(Original in Special Collections)
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(Original in Special Collections)
Avalon school blueprint label
(Original in Special Collections)
Source notes
The local newspaper, the Vernal Express, was published biweekly and wrote about the school and its troubles nearly every edition. So evidence is easy to find. Key articles are:
Avalon school to be finished. (1935, Jul 18). Vernal Express. (Accessed 2023, Feb 1: https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s69c8b3m/21515865)
County FERA projects hire 357 workers (1935, Feb 21). Vernal Express. (Accessed 2023, Feb 1: https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s62j7rk1/21522228)
FERA spends $90,000 in Uintah County (1935, Jan 3). Vernal Express. (Accessed 2023, Feb 1: https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s61276b4/21513594)
Blueprints from:
Special Collections, Ashton & Evans collection [unprocessed blueprints]. J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah.
Project originally submitted by Corrinne Fiedler on February 3, 2023.
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