Buttin Rock School

The Buttin Rock School personifies the rural Ozarks schools that served small student bodies and functioned as a community social center. Teachers taught between 10 and 24 students at a time, coming from only a few families in the area. The schools only had a pot stove for heating and no indoor plumbing or electricity. Still, they played a vital role in the community, which like many rural Ozark locations, was nearly isolated because of the large hills, waterways, and rugged terrain surrounding the area.

Unlike most of Missouri, the Ozarks remained a rugged and sparsely-populated region until after the Civil War. Although the 1854 Graduation Act and 1862 Homestead Act inspired some to move to the Ozarks, the arrival of the railroad and lumber industry during the late nineteenth century provided the impetus for substantial migration to the region, notably from Tennessee and Kentucky. The influx of migrants, many of whom took jobs in the two burgeoning industries, boosted the region's population and changed its culture, including an appreciation of public education. The state of Missouri initially provided for one school per township in the 1840s, and the legislature again attempted to establish a public education system in 1865, but the issues attached to the Civil War and its aftermath prevented its creation. Finally, in 1874, with the rising population, the legislature re-wrote laws to make public education a reality; Missouri supported more than ten thousand rural, mainly one-room schools by 1900. 

Buttin Rock emerged as one of the last districts in the county to be organized, having been carved from other districts. However, the school opened at a time when Missouri administrators grew concerned about the quality of education provided at the multitudes of small, rural schools. Missouri legislatures passed several pieces of legislation from 1911 to 1948 that urged one- and two-room schools to consolidate. Regardless, schools had become such an integral aspect of the Ozarks culture by that time that local residents vehemently opposed their closure. In 1931, roughly eighty one- and two-teacher schools operated in the county. Buttin Rock School was maintained as a "hardship school" until 1960, and the school district until 1963 because the rugged and hilly Ozark terrain made it difficult for students to reach other schools.

Builders (likely the M.V. Keller family, who owned the surrounding land from 1907 to 193O) originally situated Buttin Rock School about a half-mile from its current location, but a significant flooding risk forced its move in 1920. Fortunately, the school's simple wood frame set on cornerstones without any semblance of a firm tie to a foundation allowed it to be mobile. Many one-room schools enjoyed the same type of construction, and communities routinely moved them because of environmental changes or to meet changing population centers.

A pot-bellied stove provided the only heat in the Buttin Rock School building, a standard form of heating for Shannon County schools. Indeed, most rural schools in the Ozarks offered few amenities to their students. Few had electricity or indoor plumbing; students used outhouses, even by the late 1940s. Still, despite their utter lack of modern features, the schools remained operational because they existed as the only option for children seeking an education in the rural, rugged parts of the Ozarks.

Like most rural schools, Buttin Rock only served a few families, usually teaching around ten students and never more than two dozen. The school also offered the children, and sometimes entire families, their only opportunity at a social life as the large bluffs, springs, and rugged terrain kept most rural Ozark families isolated from each other. Indeed, families often gathered at the school to have pie dinners, which served both as a social function and as a fundraiser. Because most people in the Buttin Rock school district were poor, the teachers routinely provided students with supplies. Some of the money from the pie suppers sometimes went into a fund that teachers used to purchase school materials, but teachers often supplemented the funds with their own money. 

Although teachers usually boarded with one of the families, they lived in a small trailer next to the school during the week. One teacher, Dorothy Ennis, also managed the school lunch program at Buttin Rock. Because she only had the pot-bellied stove for heating, she began with a large pot of beans every morning in her trailer next to the school and then transferred it to the pot-bellied stove; the beans were ready for the kids at lunchtime. 

Despite the school's primitive makeup, the school remained in operation until 1960, having served as the area's primary educational building from 1914 - 1958. The area's unique geography and sparse settlement made the school a necessary component of Buttin Rock's culture.

Little, Kimberly Scott. "Registration Form: Buttin Rock School." National Register of Historic Places. mostateparks.com. 1991. https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/Buttin%20Rock%20School.pdf. 

O'Donnell, Bill. "One Room Schools in the Ozarks." National Park Service. nps.gov. January 5, 2018. https://www.nps.gov/ozar/learn/historyculture/one-room-schools-in-the-ozarks.htm.

Ozark Radio News Staff. "ONSR to host reunion at Buttin Rock School." Ozark Radio News. ozarkradionews.com. September 21, 2016. https://www.ozarkradionews.com/local-news/onsr-to-host-reunion-at-buttin-rock-school.