There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa

8. Rural School Consolidation and Making of Buck Creek

buck creek Bernard L. Thompson, 76, died Wednesday morning, Jan. 29, 1997, in Delaware County Memorial Hospital, Manchester, after a brief illness. Services: 1 p.m. Saturday, Buck Creek Methodist Church. . . . Bernard Leslie Thompson was born March 9, 1920, in rural Buck Creek, the son of Glen and Edna Saunders Thompson. He received his education in Buck Creek, graduating from Buck Creek High School with the class of 1939. . . . After his marriage, Bernard farmed. He then drove a school bus for Maquoketa Valley Schools and worked at Iowa Steel and Iron Works in Cedar Rapids for a brief period. Bernard farmed the remainder of his career in Union Township near Buck Creek. — Cedar Rapids Gazette, 30 January 1997 8 rural school consolidation and the making of buck creek Buck Creek? Where is Buck Creek? It does not appear on any of the official state highway maps published in the last quarter century. According to current United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps, Buck Creek is the name of a small stream originating about 1.5 miles northwest of the town of Ryan. It flows generally eastward for 13 miles until it empties into the Maquoketa River about a mile northwest of the town of Hopkinton in Section 11 of Union Township in Delaware County. It is joined along the way by Golden Branch in Section 11 of Hazel Green Township and by Lime Creek in Section 17 of Union Township. If Buck Creek is a place, someone failed to bring this to the attention of the USGS’s cartographers. Likewise, Buck Creek fails to appear on any of the current maps produced for or by Delaware County indicating property ownership, governmental subdivisions, school districts, and recreation opportunities. Nevertheless, as Bernard Thompson’s obituary makes clear, Buck Creek is, or was, a rural community of some sort, sharing its name with, or perhaps taking its name from, a Methodist church located in Union Township. Most residents of southern Delaware County know Lime Creek as ‘‘Buck Creek’’ and Buck Creek west of its confluence with Lime Creek as ‘‘Upper Buck Creek.’’ From this perspective, it is Upper Buck Creek that originates near Ryan, while Buck Creek has its source in Section 33 of Hazel Green Township. Although this might seem a trivial matter, to those residents, like the Thompsons, whose families have lived and worked in the area for several generations, it 131 is not. If what the USGS refers to as Lime Creek really is Lime Creek and not Buck Creek, then the personal biographies of many current residents and much of the historical geography of the area need rewriting from beginning to end. Traveling along County Road D-47 from Hopkinton to Ryan today, the careful observer will notice a small sign by the side of the road announcing the approach of ‘‘BUCK CREEK Community POP. 32’’ (figure 12). The person or group placing the sign there was apparently conforming to the way in which the U.S. Bureau of the Census has helped train us to think about places in the late twentieth century. There probably are thirty-two people who live in the less than half dozen houses huddled around the small Methodist church near where Lime Creek — or ‘‘Buck Creek’’ — crosses the road. Nonetheless, Buck Creek formerly was a much larger place, both in terms of population and territory.1 About 150 yards west of the church stands a large dilapidated brick building, a former school with gymnasium attached, presently used to store the farm equipment and grain of one of the bigger farm operations in the area. ‘‘BUCK CREEK CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL’’ is emblazoned on a large cement tablet prominently displayed on the front of the building above its main entrance (figure 13). From a census-derived conception of place, this building seems strangely out of place. It is much 132 Resistance and Place figure 12. Approach to Buck Creek. 1994 photograph by the author. too large for there not to be some visible evidence of Buck Creek having consisted of many more than the half dozen or so buildings there now. This must be the school referred to with apparent pride in Bernard Thompson’s obituary. This chapter seeks to explain how and why a different place called Buck Creek was created out of portions of Union and Hazel Green Townships beginning almost a century ago. The Buck Creek Methodist Church and...