One-room schoolhouse endures as comfy home in Tumacacori

School buses haven’t always transported children to their classes. During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, public schools in rural Southern Arizona were small and within easy walking or horseback riding distance to their pupils.

In the Tubac and Rio Rico areas, for example, there were schools in Amado, Tubac, TumacĂ¡cori and on ranches that later became part of Rio Rico.

Sally “Bunny” Hanson’s comfortable home was originally the adobe block, one-room TumacĂ¡cori School District 18.

Now a spacious three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch house sheltered by tall trees and surrounded by lush green pasture, the school was once a thick-walled, simple rectangular building with a small add-on on one side. The exterior walls on the tall building were left unplastered, showing that construction occurred at two different time periods.

Living in an old building has its challenges. “The floor in the living room is different levels. There’s one section of red cement and one section of green cement. That’s why it’s carpeted,” Hanson said.

The tin roof had its share of leaks over the years but now the roof is watertight due to two layers of tin and insulating foam.

Old photos show a stove pipe vented outside, but there’s no evidence of it inside. There is an attractive fireplace, which probably wasn’t there when it was a school.

It’s at the southeast corner of Santa Gertrudis Lane and the East Frontage Road of Interstate 19. When the school was in use, those routes were no more than dirt tracks. Hanson has copies of photos from 1924 that show the school standing in the middle of a barren dirt field, the only trees being along the banks of the Santa Cruz River.

A letter written to Hanson by Douglas Cumming, who died in 2000, that accompanies a photo explains that the school had about 20 students at that time. Cumming’s mother, Inez, was the teacher and he was a pupil.

Although the house has undergone many renovations to add a kitchen, family room, bedrooms and bathrooms, Hanson said, the original schoolroom appears unchanged in size, and serves as the living room, about 10 feet wide by 20 feet long. It has wood-framed doorways on the west and the east, and two windows on the west, which are visible in one of the 1924 photos. Now, the windows are still in place but an enclosed porch provides more shelter from the sun for the west side.

What was it?

The TumacĂ¡cori School may not have even been constructed to serve as a school. One hint comes from a July 31, 1924, letter written by Grace A. Farrell, Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools. She wrote an annual report to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that included a reference to District No. 18, the TumacĂ¡cori School. She wrote:

“District No. 18, being obliged to move from U.S. Government property, has a small building made over from an old adobe but clean and comfortable.”

In her 1973 memoir, Inez Cumming wrote that she taught at the TumacĂ¡cori School on the grounds of the mission in 1923 and that the school was moved the following year to the building at Santa Gertrudis Lane. That’s because repairs were being made to the school on the mission property, which is now the TumacĂ¡cori National Historic Park.

Research has not yet uncovered what year Hanson’s adobe was built. One published source says the TumacĂ¡cori School was combined with Calabasas District No. 5 in 1930, so it appears it wasn’t used as a school after that time.

Hanson knows it served as a farmer’s home after its school days ended. “It was rented to many people” over the years. Two of those included the French author Georges Simenon, who wrote a novel about Nogales and TumacĂ¡cori, “The Bottom of the Bottle,” and Retired Gen. Ariel Nielsen, a longtime Tubac resident, she said.

No records

Other records about the school are not available at the Santa Cruz County School Superintendent’s office, said Manuel Huerta, deputy superintendent. And nothing exists in the files of the Santa Cruz Valley Unified School District No. 35, which was formed in 1973 and joined together Districts 3 (Tubac) and 5 (Calabasas).

As the years went by, the school and its surroundings became part of a large cattle ranch that encompassed land on the east and west sides of the Santa Cruz River, purchased in about 1957 by Hanson’s parents, Charles “Chay” Day and Sally Stafford Day.

The Days lived in a larger house on the ranch property at first. Later, Hanson said, as they sold off portions of the ranch, they used the former schoolhouse as their weekend home while they lived in Tucson, doing more remodeling. She moved in about 10 years ago and one of the first projects was to add storage, she said.

In a 1993 letter to Hanson, Douglas Cumming passed on a memory from his days as a student at TumacĂ¡cori School. “The south side of the school was an open field. Cattle would come there to bed down at night. The result was an area that was full of dried cow chips. The older boys, at recess and at noon, would go to this field, organize themselves into two teams and engage in battle. Their ammunition consisted of dried cow chips, which they threw at each other.

“I begged to be allowed to engage in these battles but was told that I was too little. Finally, though, they relented and agreed to let me participate. I had been on the field for perhaps two minutes when one of the whizzing missiles hit me on the side of my face and I ran squalling off the field of battle.”

Students learn many things at school, not limited to reading and writing. And former schoolhouses retain the ability to teach all of us important lessons about our past.

(Reach the writer at kathleenvan@msn.com.)