The Canelo School is a historic

one-room schoolhouse One-room schoolhouses, or One-room schools, have been commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including Prussia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, and Spa ...

in eastern

Santa Cruz County, Arizona Santa Cruz is a County (United States), county in southern Arizona, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population is 47,669. The county seat is Nogales, Arizona, Nogales. The county was established in 1899. It ...

, in the ghost town of Canelo. Opened in 1912, the Canelo School is one of the few one-room

adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

schoolhouses remaining in the state. As a rare and well-preserved surviving example of a once common school building type in southern Arizona. The Canelo School was placed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on July 31, 1991.

Name

"Canelo" comes from the Spanish word "canela", meaning

cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus ''Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, biscuits, b ...

, and was the name applied to the nearby

Canelo Hills The Canelo Hills are a range of low mountains or hills in eastern Santa Cruz County, Arizona. The range consists of a series of northwest–southeast trending ridges extending from the Sonoita Creek valley southwest of Sonoita to the Parker Ca ...

, which have a light brownish or cinnamon colored appearance when viewed from the south. In 1904, the local

Forest Ranger A ranger, park ranger, park warden, field ranger, or forest ranger is a person entrusted with protecting and preserving parklands and protected areas – private, national, state, provincial, or local parks. Their duties include (but are not limi ...

, Robert A. Rodgers, asked the county to establish a post office in town named "Canille", which was later changed to "Canela" and finally to "Canelo" over the following years. As a result of these alterations in spelling, the Canelo School is also referred to as the "Canille School".

History

The Canelo School was built in 1912 to replace a similar one-room adobe schoolhouse located in Camp Evans, which was a small silver

mining camp A mining community, also known as a mining town or a mining camp, is a community that houses miners. Mining communities are usually created around a mine or a quarry. Historical mining communities Australia * Ballarat, Victoria * Bendig ...

two miles to the east of Canelo. The site chosen for construction of the new building was on the

homestead Homestead may refer to: *Homestead (building), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses * Nguni homestead, a cluster of houses inhabited by a single extended family, typically with a kraal ...

of B.K. Wilson, who was the school teacher in Camp Evans. Wilson deeded the property to the Canelo School District about 1914 with a caveat that stated the land would be forfeited if used for commercial or industrial purposes. The deed was recorded in 1942 at the request of Cora Everhart, a Santa Cruz County superintendent who taught in many of the one-room schoolhouses in southern Arizona. The Canelo School first opened in September 1912 with about twenty attendees and closed in 1948, when the number of students declined to just one. The first school teacher was Miss Fern Bartlett, a twenty-year-old woman who rode her horse eight miles to get to the schoolhouse every morning. Since its closing, the schoolhouse has served the people in the Canelo area as a community center, country store, church, and funeral home. In 1917, the trustees of the Canelo School District became the legal agents responsible for the Black Oak Cemetery, a free-use graveyard a few miles northwest of the townsite. The schoolhouse is currently occupied by the Canelo Cowboy Church and is open to visitors on Sundays. The Canelo School has a stone and concrete foundation, adobe walls, a

cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae * Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona ...

roof and wooden floors made of

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...

and

oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...

. Heat was originally supplied by a

wood-burning stove A wood-burning stove (or wood burner or log burner in the UK) is a heating or cooking appliance capable of burning wood fuel, often called solid fuel, and wood-derived biomass fuel, such as sawdust bricks. Generally the appliance consists of a s ...

. In the 1930s, the adobe walls were plastered and sections of tin were placed over the cedar shingles on the roof. The front entrance is at the northern end of the building, above which is a square bell tower with a pyramidal top. There are five windows on the western wall and four on the eastern side. A fifth window in the eastern wall was later converted into a doorway and side entrance. There are no doors or windows in the southern wall. In spite of some damage caused by vandalism and neglect, the Canelo School remains "virtually the same" as it was when built in 1912.

References

{{Santa Cruz County, Arizona One-room schoolhouses in Arizona Schools in Santa Cruz County, Arizona Defunct schools in Arizona Educational institutions established in 1912 National Register of Historic Places in Santa Cruz County, Arizona School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona 1912 establishments in Arizona

Name

History

See also

References