Iowa Country Schools
The Country School is an American icon. Once ubiquitous across Iowa's landscape, one- two-room country schools are quickly disappearing. Although a few in Amish communities are still in educational use, nearly every historic country school in Iowa has been repurposed. Luckily, many have been reused as country school museums, giving children today a lesson in Iowa's educational history. The Iowa Historic Preservation Alliance is dedicated to preserving the state's country schools. Board member William Sherman is the organization's resident expert on country schools and organizes a country school conference each fall, bringing together country school preservationists from across the Midwest.
Annual Country School Conference
The 9th annual Iowa country school preservation conference will be held Oct. 10-11, 2008, in Ames. This year's conference, Perceptions of the Country School, will feature Dr. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, ISU Director of Graduate Education, Program in Agricultural History and Rural Studies. Learn the pros and cons of restoring a country school to a specific time period, how to create a website for your country school museum, and how to beautify your country school's grounds appropriately. The agenda also includes a session on program resources for country schools, information on the country school grant program from the State Historical Society of Iowa, and much, much, more! On Saturday, tour Nevada's historic village, Colo's Reed-Niland restored gas station and motel, and country schools in State Center and Marshalltown.
For more information download the brochure 
(196 KB). Or, contact Bill Sherman at wsherman@networkiowa.com.
Sponsored by the Iowa Historical Preservation Alliance, Ames Historical Society, Story County Conservation Commission, Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), and Iowa State University Departments of Agriculture History and Rural Studies, and Education.
Iowa's Country School Directory
The information in this directory was collected several years. The information came from surveys that were filled out and returned. Some efforts were made to confirm information, but we have not double-checked everything. We assumed the information given in the surveys was accurate. Please check with the contact listed before making a long, special trip to visit a school site. This websiste will be updated as information is collected, so please contact either the Iowa Historic Preservation Alliance or Bill Sherman at 1-800-434-2039 or wsherman@networkiowa.com with any incorrect information you discover, whether it is your museum site or not.
There are hundreds of former one-room schools that have been turned into businesses, and thousands are in use as homes. This directory is only of those schools that are being preserved as museums. The schools are organized by Tourism area (Western, Central, Eastern), and then alphabetically by county and township school name (e.g. Newport #3), where available. The parent organization is listed under the name of the school. The years listed after the school name are the time period depicted at the museum. Schools with a narrower time period normally give more focused and accurate information. At the bottom of each school listing is a series of codes that classify that school according to a code developed by national one-room school historian Andrew Gulliford in America's Country Schools.
This code consists of:
- P = some work has been done to preserve the school
- M = the school is maintained as a museum
- H = students are brought to the school for history programs
- CC = the school is used as a community center for meetings
- NR = the school is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
- V = the school is used as a voting center.
Tour the schools:
Western Touring Area (46 sites)
Central Touring Area (43 sites)
Eastern Touring Area (68 sites)
One-Room Schools (non-museums)
Acknowledgements
The Iowa Historic Preservation Alliance wishes to thank everyone who took the time to respond to the survey that makes this guide possible and the many people who gave us suggestions. This project is funded, in part, by a grant from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, Iowa Community Cultural Grant Program.
(July 2002)