One Room Schoolhouse Replica

The most recent addition to the Buffalo Bill Museum is the "Robert Schiffke One-Room Schoolhouse". 

Bob Schiffke was a long-time Executive Director of the Museum, and he built many of the displays inside the Museum.  A retired teacher, Bob loved history and had a wonderful ability to "tell a story".  

Our one-room school is an exact replica of a typical rural Iowa school.   The big advantage of one-room schools was that the kids were close to home, so they could walk or ride to school, and then get back to work on the farm in the afternoon.  In 1901, Iowa had 12,623 operating one-room schools.   Most counties had more than 100. 

As towns started to develop, they were governed by township trustees -- who were responsible for the schools, hiring the teacher, etc.  Although every State had one-room schools -- what makes Iowa unique is that we had more operating one-room schools for a longer period of time than any other state in America -- from 1830 to 1967.