An abandoned school built in the 19th century reopens its doors to students.
Garcia Elementary School, located in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, was built as early as the 1860s, experts said.
Now the school, which has not been used as a classroom since 1963, will once again house students, as the local community races to save the building (and others like it) from ruin.
Eerie photographs of the school’s exterior and interior captured a different era of learning.
The images showed crumbling walls with peeling paint, an old scale and a blackboard that had a student’s faded scribbles from decades ago.
The Colorado School was built as early as the 1860s and is one of the last surviving buildings from that era in the local area.
Garcia Elementary School closed its doors in 1963 and has been empty for decades.
Remnants of the past were visible in the school, including faint numbers written on a blackboard.
Several antique objects were found in the classrooms, including old books and magazines and even a scale.
The school is in the San Luis Valley, where many Hispanic settlers immigrated after the Mexican-American War.
A sign, which appeared to be half a century old, hung on the wall and proclaimed: “Library now open.”
Sketches made by young students, now probably in their 70s, adorned the walls of some classrooms.
The shelves were filled with volumes of old encyclopedias with yellowed pages. Old issues of National Geographic and Time Magazine were discovered in a magazine rack.
Garcia Elementary School is a poignant reminder of times gone by, and its dusty bookshelves and cracked adobe exterior evoke a time when the town was just a Hispanic settlement.
After the Mexican-American War in 1848, Hispanic settlers migrated to the San Luis Valley, when the region was still part of the Territory of New Mexico.
Many of the buildings from that era have been lost to time and Garcia Elementary School is one of the few still standing.
The school’s original clay plaster is still intact and has a lava stone base, a common feature among older buildings in the region.
The lowest layer of soil has bark on the back, meaning it was formed from a local tree.
Old and antique books lined the shelves of Garcia Elementary School, which retains its original clay plaster.
The lowest floor of the school was made from a local tree and old copies of magazines were found on the shelves.
Old copies of National Geographic and Time magazines were found in a magazine rack
Water damage has caused cracks to form in the walls.
The renovators have their work cut out for them: water damage has plagued the building and animals have burrowed into the foundation.
Still, the school shows obvious signs of its age, and snatching the building from the clutches of time will be difficult.
Over the decades, animals have burrowed deep into the building’s foundation.
Water damage has damaged the deeper structure, causing the building’s corners to lean outward and posing a major challenge for renovators, who will have to figure out how to protect the adobe.
Near the north gate of the school, the adobe is completely missing, a precarious situation that could lead to a collapse.
But all the peeling paint, sagging ceiling and rickety bookshelves aren’t enough to deter the school’s renovators.
Barbara Darden, an architect leading the building’s renovation, plans to add a unisex and handicap-accessible bathroom to the school.
It is also considering using solar energy to power the building and taking steps to improve the overall appearance of the school.
“The buildings are not the important thing,” Darden said. The Colorado Sun. “It’s the people and the culture, and the buildings tell that story, they help interpret the history of a town or a community.”
Meanwhile, Michael Medina, an 89-year-old former student at the school, recalled to the publication having ‘at At least one teacher and maybe two teachers who were instrumental in us learning to add, subtract, multiply and form a sentence, which helped us a lot later in life.’
