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Pearl Button Workers and the Unions
Now Muscatine Books & More
Two Little Girls At Riverside Park
Jill purchasing items from Annsarts & AntiquesMelpine Schoolhouse outside Muscatine
Being retired English teachers, Jill and I are always interested in education, schools, and history. So, we were naturally attracted to the Muscatine County one room school house called Melpine School.
It's located on Wild Cat Den Road off of highway 22 between Fairport and Montpelier, Iowa at the Wild Cat Den State Park.
We were quite fortunate because we were there on a Friday in May, and the school is open on Sunday afternoons from 1:00 pm until 5 pm starting in June. However, it was toward the end of the Iowa school year, and lots of grade school children from the area were on field trips to see the school and the Grist Mill.
As we walked up to the school, a nice woman asked if she could help us. She had just completed a tour with children. We told her that we were retired teachers from Illinois. She, too, is a retired teacher who gives tours as a volunteer. She kindly said that she would love to give us a guided tour, which she did. Ironically, she showed us a picture of her as a child in this very schoolroom. Naturally, I had to take a photograph of her beside the picture.
They have gathered wonderful memorabilia and have displayed them beautifully. They have various size school desks, a victrola, old school books, period lunch buckets, school records, teacher contracts, souvenir booklets, and lots of old photographs. There is a girl's entrance and a boy's entrance with separate coat closets.
We just loved this tour, the information, our tour guide, the setting in Wild Cat Den State Park, and the lovely 70 degree weather.
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