Gilbert, Arizona

that time, all students went to Mesa to receive a high school education before Gilbert had a high school. After 1915, some of the elemen tary school teachers taught high school courses in their spare time. The old Gilbert High School was completed in 1920. The building cost $125,000. It was a two story building with classrooms on both floors and a very large auditorium. By 1920, grades seven through twelve were taught in this new building. In the early 1920s, an evaporative cooler foun tain was built in the back of the elementary school. When I started school in 1941, that large fountain with eight outlets was still there and was a most welcome convenience.

Among the students in the first grade in 1916 were two young girls who rode their horses to the new elementary school at Elliot and Gilbert Roads. One was my mother-in-law, Velma Anderson, whose grandfather was the first to develop homestead entry land into a farm. His name was John Anderson, and his son farmed that property until his death in 1946. The other horseback rider to the Gilbert school was Marian Bond. She later married Alfred Pine, the grandson of James Pine, another Gilbert pioneer. Photos of the two ladies and their first-grade friends are on display in the School Room at the Gilbert Historical Society. This building was an elementary school only, but by 1915, area residents were asking for high school classes to be offered as well. Prior to

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