This
article appeared in Celebrate San Marcos 150!,
published by the Daily Record & The Free Press, San Marcos, TX March
1, 2001.
Permission to reprint obtained from Cyndy Slovak-Barton, Associate Editor of
The Free Press, on Oct. 6, 2004 and Rowe Ray, Managing Editor of the Daily Record,
on
Oct. 5, 2004.
 In
1846, William W. Moon, the first settler in what became San Marcos,
built
a log
cabin that served as a school, church and courthouse near
present day Colloquium Books. For the next 20 years or so small
private schools, tutors and parents would provide most of the education
for
the children.
Then
in 1868 the Coronal Institute, a Methodist High School, was
built on the
site of the present Lamar Annex. The school’s
initial success was due to its healthy climate. Yellow fever epidemics
were hitting the schools in the coastal regions and in East Texas.
The 1869 Coronal Catalog stated that, “out
of 300 students received into the Institute within
the
last
three years, not one death has occurred,
and there has been only one single case of serious illness.”
Coronal
Institute closed December 21, 1918 for the Christmas
vacation--the last student to leave that day was C.M. Maurice Waldrip,
father of
Charles Waldrip. The school failed to reopen in January,
thus making Waldrip the last student of the Institute. In 1925
Coronal was sold
to the San Marcos School District.
San
Marcos High School was built on the block of Comanche and Hutchison
across
from the present Pennington’s
Funeral Home. It was an elegant three-story red
brick building. The last Rattler yearbook produced from this
location
was in the spring
of 1940. The 1941 yearbook edited by J.M. Cape
was produced from the Education Building located on Southwest
Texas
State campus.
In
1918 Southwest Texas Normal School (SWT) built the Education
Building “intended |
in
large part as a demonstration and laboratory school.” In
1939 the Auditorium-Laboratory School Building was completed
by the college and all public school students, kindergarten
through
6th
grade, were housed there. By 1941 all the public school students
were located
on the college campus.
Patty
Sherrill Sullivan entered first grade in the Education Building
in 1933
and would graduate
from there
in 1944. Hers was the first class to go all the way from
start to finish
at the Education Building. Elementary grades were on the first
floor; Junior High was on the second floor, and High School
was on the third
floor.
By
1949 the college and the public schools were bursting at the seams
so the
last of the Coronal Buildings were destroyed
to
build a new High School on the site. In the fall of 1951
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the
first students moved into the brand new school, which consisted
of grades 10-12. In the fall of 1952, grades 9 through 12
were housed in the high school. Bonham Elementary opened in 1951,
Travis Junior High School and Bowie Elementary opened in 1954,
and Crockett
Elementary in 1964. By 1965, all San Marcos Public Schools were gone
from the Southwest Texas campus.
In
the ensuing years, San Marcos CISD has continued to add new campuses.
These
include the present
San Marcos
High School on Highway 123, Hernandez Intermediate School, and
Goodnight and Miller Junior High Schools.
I
spent many happy hours searching
through old clippings, yearbooks, publications, scrap-books and
visiting with various BISMs. I learned that San Marcos’ love
affair with athletics began early on.
In
1911, Mr. Moore and Coach Woods set about to make us contenders
and in 1912
the Rattlers “wiped up the
ground with Austin High School.” In 1914 the Rattlers
beat both Southwest Normal and San Antonio High School. The
early Junior
High
School teams were known as the Trojans, and later as the Bull
Dogs, but the High School team has always been called the Rattlers.
The
history of education in San Marcos would be incomplete without
mention of the
selfless, dedicated men and women who devoted their lives
to improving the lives of our children. Some members of this honor
roll include
Yancy P. Yarbrough, Mary Dodgen, Irma Bruce, Willie Higgs,
Ed Lyons, Ruth Munk, Non Douglas Wray, Owen Goodnight, Thomas Yoakum,
James
Farmer, Bush Ewing and Gwen Smith.
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