When the Eaton sugar factory was built in 1902, the door was opened for area farmers to begin raising sugar beets. The resulting need for laborers to work the fields drew large numbers of people, including many Russian Germans, to the Eaton area. The influx was so great that Eaton’s population doubled in a relatively short period of time, causing overcrowding of classrooms. As a result, the high school pictured here, named for town father Benjamin H. Eaton, was built and opened in in the fall of 1909. The photo depicts the school while it was still under construction. You can see three men, probably construction workers: one standing in the main entry way and two sitting in adjacent windows in the top floor.
Julius L. Murphy, the author of this postcard to Anna Moore in Boise, Idaho, mailed the card on November 16, 1909, which would have been just weeks after the new school opened. He is apparently attending school there and is giving Anna the rundown of the place. As you’ll note on the front of the card, he has written, both on the photo and in the margin beneath, the locations of the school’s assembly room, physics and chemistry labs, gym and girls’ dressing room, as well as the classrooms of teachers Skinner, Black, Clark and Copeland. He has more to say about the school in his written message to her:
“Eaton, Colo. Nov. 14, 09. Hello Anna, Glad you have not forgotten Eaton. Sure Miss Skinner is a peach, and our new music teacher Miss Tomey (sic) is a cracker jack. You ought to be coming to school here in our new building it is a humdinger. Julius L. Murphy”
Preceding the opening of the school, the Greeley Tribune published an article about it dated September 2, 1909. With the exception of instructor Copeland, it provides the first names and specialties of the teachers identified by Murphy: Skinner is Faith Skinner, English and German; Black is H.E. Black, gymnasium manager and teacher of elective subjects; Clark is Carrie Clark, Latin and History; and music teacher Tomey (sic) is Jane Twomey.
By the 1920’s, Eaton’s continued growth overwhelmed the physical capacity of the school. Teachers found themselves teaching in hallways, in the basement and even on a stairway landing. In 1928 a new high school was built. I’ve not been able to find any evidence showing that the building pictured here is still standing.
REFERENCES:
- “Eaton High School,” by Ben Fogelberg, History Colorado, dated August 8, 2001 (at https://www.historycolorado.org/grant-news/2001/08/01/eaton-high-school)
- Greeley Tribune, Dated September 2, 1909 (at www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org)
