Golden – This week, the community on the east side of North Table Mountain is celebrating Fairmount Elementary School’s centennial.
Students and teachers are dressing in clothes from periods in the school’s history. The community – where residents still recall siblings of classmates and live on the same streets – will gather at 5 p.m. Friday for a barbecue.
“This is a community that people don’t leave, and if they do leave, they come back,” said June Ruppel, who attended Fairmount Elementary School as a child and has been its librarian for seven years.
Established in the 1870s by miners, ranchers and laborers, the unincorporated Fairmount area sprawls from Arvada to West 32nd Avenue and from North Table Mountain to Ward Road.
While the current school at 15975 W. 50th Ave. was built in 1961, its two-story predecessor arose from ranchland east of McIntyre Street at West 48th Avenue in 1905.
“I can’t get over the changes,” said Louise Larson, who taught at both Fairmount schools from 1942 to 1982. “It’s so different now. Kids come to school knowing so much today.”
Larson remembers students who rode horses several miles to school, leaving the critters in a fenced area with a shed near the school.
Colleen Hope, who has taught music at Fairmount for 15 years, was in the third grade when the school moved.
She recalled that the principal, Bertha Campbell, directed the students to march three blocks to the new school.
“You didn’t mess around with Mrs. Campbell,” Hope said. “We each grabbed a handful of books and walked to the new school.”
The old school featured four classrooms on two floors, with the library in the low-ceiling basement. The Mothers Club made hot lunches at the Loch Lomond Grange behind the school.
It was built after a bond issue was approved by a vote of 25-5.
The first school, which opened with three teachers and seven families, was gutted by fire in 1935. While the school was renovated, classes were held for a while in the grange.
Today, principal Morris Thompson has 30 teachers, 464 students and 18 classrooms.
With half-million-dollar houses sprouting on the landscape, Fairmount will continue to grow to accommodate an expected 200 more students.
Next year, a $4.5 million addition will include 10 classrooms, a new music room, a gym and an expanded cafeteria.
“The current school cost $293,015, or $12.26 per square foot,” said Thompson, Fairmount principal for four years. “The addition works out at $125 per square foot.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
