Historic Skagit City School getting long-awaited facelift

Decades after it laid the foundation for Fir Island students, history is repeating itself at the landmark Skagit City School.

Only this time, truly in terms of bricks and mortar.

A new foundation is in the works.

Also a new roof.

And a host of other related exterior repairs to the weathered old schoolhouse, which dates to the turn of the century.

The 20th century, that is.

The long-sought facelift is being undertaken jointly by the Skagit County Historical Museum, Chad Fisher Construction, and a loyal cadre of volunteers. Work began in late September, with the Fisher firm committed to restoring the historic building as near as possible to its early 1900s look.

The museum, based in La Conner, committed to restoration of the schoolhouse — the last remaining structure in rural Skagit City, near Conway — immediately upon acquiring it from the Skagit City Community Club a year and a half ago.

Seeds for the project were planted much earlier, however.

The late Ronnie Holttum, who often regaled La Conner High Alumni Association audiences with such detailed, entertaining yarns he would be invited back the next year to finish a story or three, bought the Skagit City School at auction in 1943, not long after its closure.

He taught Sunday School there for about 20 years, and envisioned the community club that provided its maintenance.

But time and weather ultimately took its toll.

Structural damage gradually eroded the schoolhouse, leaving surviving community club members in a quandary.

Without a costly overhaul, the old schoolhouse, a popular gathering place and tour destination, became more and more limited as a public resource — even as a repository for historical archives.

Still, it had fared better than other country schoolhouses of similar vintage. A number of them had been swamped by the high floodwaters of 1901-02, leading Fir Island settlers to build the Skagit City School on relatively higher ground.

The key term here is relatively. The school still relied heavily upon nearby dikes to stave off flooding during high tides.

But first there was a virtual flood of school-age children to house, making necessary construction of a western extension to the school within a few years of its opening.

Pupils attended the Skagit City School for 38 years. In 1940 a campus consolidation movement was embraced, shifting students to classrooms in Conway and Mount Vernon.

Holttum and the community club ultimately converted the schoolhouse into a storehouse — one filled with volumes of history.

That role should expand thanks to the present restoration project.

The Skagit County Historical Museum initially sought the Skagit City School as a satellite locale capable of providing additional exhibit and conference space and as a site for history camps.

Thus, at long last, the future of the Skagit City School appears as eventful as its past.