Renewal of Douglas Flat school a success

The Douglas Flat School is looking more and more like it did when first built in 1854.

The first school built in Calaveras County, according to research by local historian Bonnie Miller, the school’s benefactors have arranged for work to begin on a kitchen addition and new electrical wiring. Repairs to the school’s bell tower were completed last spring.
   

The work is being funded by various private donations of money and labor.

“It’s a neat, neat old historic building,” said Angela Harmon, the president of the Douglas Flat Community Center Board of Directors.

The little piece of history hosts a number of sizable groups, with a Unitarian Universalist congregation, county Democrats and Greens, the Foothill Collaborative for Sustainability and Golden Palette artists group, meeting either regularly or occasionally at the Main Street site.

It last served as a school in the 1970s, when an overflow class of kindergartners from Vallecito Union School District matriculated there one fall.

Harmon is hopeful the school can be an even bigger asset to the community if more of the wish list of improvements at the site can be fulfilled.

The kitchen and wiring projects still need to be finished, she said, and $5,000 is needed to complete a landscaping project begun with funds and volunteer labor from the Calaveras County Garden Club.

“We need a lot more community involvement to do a lot of activities because it takes time,” Harmon said.

Already, the Unitarians have been integral to the installation of a wheelchair ramp and most of the work on the belfry restoration.

The louver vents on the bell tower were installed several months ago in the last major upgrade to be finished.

The work began in September 2006, Harmon said.

The garden work is a pet project for Harmon, the proprietor of nearby Harmon Gardens, and would include public picnic areas.

“It is important to me to maintain the historical structure,” she said. “It’s just part of my community. I want this place to look beautiful.”