Historic Oak Grove Schoolhouse
Historic Oak Grove Schoolhouse
The story behind the camera.
In 1877, the Oak Grove School was built from native sandstone, quarried a short distance from the school site. This one-room schoolhouse serve as a school, a church, and as a local community gathering place for the residents of rural Lincoln Township up until the early 1960’s when school unification closed nearly all one-room schools across Kansas and most of the United States.
The Osage Trail was a series of trails across this territory where the Osage Indian Tribe lived, hunted, and honored their ancestors. The main trail passed directly in front of the Oak Grove School, intersecting the Continental Trail about one-half mile south of here. Settlers, like the Laura Ingalls family, followed this route, past Ladore (north of Parsons), the infamous Bender’s Inn, Independence, KS, and many other historic landmarks along their journeys. Those who settled here in the early 1800’s, lived in peace among the Osage people, who trusted and respected Jesuit Priests at Osage Mission (St. Paul, KS), enough to have their children educated by the Jesuits.
With support from the Pruitt family, community organizations, and a growing number of area residents, Oak Grove School has been faithfully restored to reflect nearly 150 years of rich local history. Future plans include a pavilion situated to the south of the school which will feature modern restrooms and the original school bell. Due to structural concerns, the bell housing was removed many years ago.
This information was reprinted from the brochure available at the Oak Grove School.
Geek Speak
This was one of the most challenging photos of this year’s collection. There was a bright moon competing with the Milky Way and nearly washing out the starry sky. A street light on the west side of the property also made it hard to capture a good image of the scene. Area alarms sounded as I tried to get near the schoolhouse to lightpaint the area. Still, I managed to take this photograph. Let me tell you how I did it.
I sat my camera on a tripod along the gravel road along the northside of the building. I used mmy Sony a6700 camera and Viltrox 27mm, f/1.2 lens. The lens was fitted with an artificial light filter. I sat the camera shutter speed at 8 seconds, an aperture of f/2.2, white balance set at 3800 kelvin, and ISO at 3200, I took a panorama of two images wide and two images tall.
