A History of Education in Crawford County

Eighty years have elapsed since that Saturday in November, 1856, when two pioneers worked hurriedly in the shade of Mason\u27s Grove to complete a small log structure that was to be Crawford county\u27s first school. In those eight decades the handful of pupils has grown to more than forty-five hundred; the one young inexperienced teacher has been replaced by two hundred and sixty well trained instructors and the primitive log schoolhouse given way to hundreds of buildings whose total value is near a million dollars. In 1856 the cost of the school was met by small, individual contributions from the pupils; in 1936 the annual cost of operating the schools of the county was $479,000