GOODSPRINGS — The warm sun toasted the air of the asphalt playground at Goodsprings Elementary School, bringing a heat that could only signify the beginning of summer.
While the start of summer break represents the end of a chapter for most schools, this year it marked the end of Goodsprings Elementary’s 113-year run.
Goodsprings Elementary has been recognized as the longest-operating school in Nevada. The Clark County School Board voted to shutter it last month.
Thursday was the final day of class at Goodsprings. Its two remaining students — Seth Stephens, 11, and his little sister Molly Stephens, 7 — were joined by about a dozen Goodsprings community members and a similar number of Clark County School District leaders for the historic desert school’s swan song.
“The history of Goodsprings Elementary is about much more than longevity. It’s about the people and the moments that filled the school every single day for more than a century,” Superintendent Jhone Ebert said outside the school, located about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.
Seth gripped the chain of his school’s flagpole and pulled down the American flag from its place high in the clear sky. Molly helped shape the flag into a triangular fold and placed it inside a wooden-and-glass case.
Printed on the glass read in part: “Raised: September 15, 1913. Lowered: May 21, 2026.”
All children in Goodsprings will now be bused to Sandy Valley School, located 12 miles west of the ghost town, down a meandering road flanked by Joshua trees and long-abandoned mines. The practice has long been standard for middle and high schoolers in Goodsprings.
The rural schoolhouse had staved off closure in the past, but with only one student expected to attend next year, district officials determined the $1 million cost to keep the school running was not worth the price.
Its two employees have already accepted new jobs within the school district, including Annemarie Behm, a teacher of eight years at Goodsprings Elementary.
Behm said she has cherished the one-on-one teaching that only a school as small as Goodsprings can provide, but said she hopes Seth and Molly will benefit from socializing with more kids their own ages.
“I saw (Seth) when he couldn’t read and now he’s reading. I saw him when he could barely add one plus one and now he’s doing math faster than I can,” Behm said. “As a teacher, that makes my heart just grow big.”
As the former student of a one-room schoolhouse herself, Behm said teaching at Goodsprings Elementary was a dream come true.
“It’s sad that it’s come to this, that they do have to close it down, because it is a special place,” she said, holding back tears.
Molly said she felt sad about losing the close connection she has with her teachers, but will remember their good times together through her photo book with pictures from her time at Goodsprings Elementary.
“I’m gonna miss them very much,” she said.
From boom to bust
The town of Goodsprings made its name as a mining hub, but has shrunk substantially over the last century as industry went elsewhere, according to Mary Blake, the secretary of the Goodsprings Historical Society.
An abundance of lead and zinc in the nearby Yellow Pine Mine made Goodsprings a prime place to harvest minerals used in bullets and batteries during World War I, Blake said. At one point in the 1910s, she said, the town’s population of around 2,500 people made it bigger than Las Vegas.
But demand for zinc and lead dried up post-war, and after the town’s ore processing mill burned down for the third time in the 1930s, the Yellow Pine Mine went out of business, Blake said. The latest census data puts Goodsprings’ population at 162.
“Goodsprings was basically a mining camp,” she said, “and when the mines aren’t there anymore, then there’s nothing to do.”
The school district will continue operations at Goodsprings Elementary until June 30. The school’s future, however, may be rooted in its past.
District officials have said the Goodsprings Historical Society has pushed to turn the school into a museum. The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District has also shown interest in relocating its adjacent library into the historic building.
Blake said she doesn’t want the schoolhouse to end up like many other buildings throughout Goodsprings’ history: a ruin left in the dust.
“Right now, it’s protected by the people of the community. But we have so many visitors who have no respect,” Blake said. “I worry about the school.”
After the ceremonial hubbub died down, Seth and Molly strapped on their backpacks and collected left-behind drinks and cupcakes. A light wind rustled the leaves on the schoolyard’s trees as the two walked off campus for the last time.
Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253.
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