Yuma County, Colo. School Districts

See the notes at the end of the table for further information.

[ Yuma County Data ][ School Map ]

Notes:

The table reflects a list of 118 school districts, circa 1925, compiled from records held by the Yuma County School Superintendent. At one time, the county had at least 125 and perhaps as many as 130 organized school districts. You will also note that there was no attempt to give each district a unique name only a unique district number.

In the early part of the 20th century, the goal of the county school system was to have a school located within 3 miles of every student. Those schools provided the equivalent of a 9th grade education for everyone that attended the 4-5 month school term.

To get a high school education rural students had to "board" in one of the towns with a high school. The Wray schools started offering a three year high school course in 1904 but charged tuition for students who lived outside the Wray school district. The first "Yuma County High School," free for any student in the county, was built in Wray in 1907.

School consolidation and reorganization has been on-going since shortly after the first formal school district was organized in Yuma in 1886. For example the Radnor district #104 had three schools (and districts); East Radnor, West Radnor and Condon which were consolidated about 1900 into a new building built in the middle of the new Radnor district. Major school consolidations started about 1940 and continued until the late 1960s. The 1960's Yuma County school district reorganization resulted in only two county school districts each with two school centers. All school students were bused to K-12 schools located in Yuma, Wray, Idalia and Liberty, located east of Joes. Today the county is in the first year of a deconsolidation plan that spit those large school districts into four new smaller districts centered on the Yuma, Liberty, Wray and Idalia schools.

The Map Location column of the table provides the location of the school district on the accompanying Yuma County school district map. For example, Plainview district 29 is at map coordinates "A1" in the northwestern corner of the county. Hale district 83 is located at "J6" which is almost in the southeastern corner.

In addition to district boundaries, the Yuma County school district map also shows school locations as they were detailed in the 1922 Yuma County Standard Atlas. The schools located in the towns of Wray and Yuma do not show on the map.

[ Yuma County Data ] [ School Map ]

Last Updated on 1/24/2002
By Lee C Zion
Email: lzion@plains.net