Mesquite Grade School

Located on Dead Ox Flat at the Eastern end of Mesquite Road near the Snake River.

The Mesquite Community was started in the early part of 1895. Mr. Shepherd was going to run the Post Office, so he suggested the name Mesquite. I suppose it was because there were so many mosquitoes. The mail was brought from Weiser each Wednesday and Saturday in a one-horse open buggy by driver Al Garren, a badly crippled fellow. The patrons would call at the Post Office for their mail and most lived four or five miles away. The mail route was started around 1913. Mesquite was only two or three hundred acres in area.

The Mesquite School was built two or three years later than the Post Office and was located two-and-a-half miles east of the Post Office. The County had appropriated enough money to pay the teacher $35 per month but failed to appropriate enough money for a building, so Dad and Ed Ashley put up the money for the school building and built it themselves. It was a small one-room school. They had to make the desks in addition to the building. The school existed for eight years and was known as Mesquite District No. 31. Before the school was built, they held classes in a deserted homesteader’s place, and the teacher was Mrs. Meade, a homesteader’s wife. Students all had individual blackboards.

The first teacher in Mesquite Schoolhouse was Edna Revi. Later, she married C. Ben Ross, who became Governor of Idaho. Some of the students included Fay Strobel, Rena Thomas, Mabel Smith, Lee and Roy Cross, Paul Joseph, and Carrie. The Eighth Grade Examination could not be given by the current teacher, so Mrs. Meade came to the school to give it. Apparently, it was quite difficult, as the only one to pass it was Paul Joseph. I went to Mesquite School three years and five years to Jefferson. Carrie, Frank, and Vern went to Mesquite. I went to Jefferson.

From George Hill – Hill Family History