ALBION, Wis. - The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the Spring Creek School in the National Register of Historic Places on September 5, 2024. The building was constructed in 1885 as a rural one-room school in the town of Albion, Jackson County.

Spring Creek School is located at N5311 Moss Hill Road in the Town of Albion. It was constructed as a one-story, one-room rural school in a simple Front Gable vernacular form. It was built for the Town of Albion School District Board in 1885 as a replacement for an earlier, smaller parochial school building that was located nearby. Like most one-room schoolhouses, the exterior of the Spring Creek School is simple in design with decorative wood elements that enframe the entrance. The interior consists of a center entrance flanked by a small room that served as a kitchen and a library that open into the classroom.

Like other schools of the day, the Spring Creek School did not have indoor plumbing; it was heated by a wood stove located in the classroom. Wood was supplied by the families of the children who attended the school, and the building had to wait until well into the twentieth century before it was electrified. The Spring Creek School is now Jackson County’s best and most intact nineteenth century example of this increasingly rare and highly threatened building type.

Since the building ceased to be used as a school in 1962, it has housed a museum dedicated to showcasing the history of rural education in Jackson County. Today, the newly restored Spring Creek School belongs to the Jackson County Historical Society, and it is open to the public during the summer months.

Additional information for the Spring Creek School is available at:

https://wisconsinhistory.org/Records/NationalRegister/NR2791 

To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit: https://wisconsinhistory.org/hp/register/

About the Wisconsin Historical Society

The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit wisconsinhistory.org.