PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE BUSY HIGHWAY! I would not suggest trying this cache during the busy cummute times (morning and afternoon). ONLY ATTEMPT TO PARK AT THE CACHE SITE IF YOU ARE WEST BOUND AND IN A VEHICLE NO LARGER THAN A PICKUP TRUCK. Please use other parking options if you are east bound, it is a busy time of day, or you are in a larger vehicle! I obviously had to get creative on this one due to the other geocache in the area marking these ghost towns!
The 28th of a series of caches planned to be hidden at or near the historic rural schoolhouses of Routt County (RCSH - Routt County School Houses). See the first cache of this series (GC6QQ71) for a complete and updated list of the ones currently available - but this list will continue to grow as there were 96 schools which served Routt County neighborhoods from 1883 until 1960 when the rural districts consolidated.
Coal View was a coal camp south of the Yampa River. Their school was a large, one-story, frame building with an attached teacherage built in 1914 or 1915. It operated until about 1926. In August 1930, the building was torn down and the lumber used to build an addition on the Bear River School – possibly the teacherage.
Bear River was a coal camp on the north side of the Yampa River. The mine operated from 1914-1940. A house at the northwest end of town served as a one-room school beginning in 1914. The first year there were 32 students! In 1917, Bear River and Coal View established District 31 and Bear River built a school in 1919. The building was forced to move uphill to accommodate the new “Victory Highway” (US 40). The move was accomplished during Christmas vacation in 1928-1929 but due to the project taking longer than expected, the kids got to enjoy a longer vacation that year! After the closure of the mine in 1940, the town was sold at auction but the school building remained until about 1954 when it was moved to Craig to be used as a residence.