This road was named Lynne School Lane in 2002 when the Aspen Acres subdivision began construction. Three historic schools have been located on the east corner of Lynne School Lane and West 2nd Street, and two of them were named Lynne School. Following is the history of all seven schools built in the Lynne Community from 1853 to 2009.
1 - 1852, Log, Bingham School
Isaac Newton Goodale built the log Bingham School on the east corner of a little lane and West 2nd Street with some help from Henry Gibson. From the end of October to the end of December 1853 Goodale recorded efforts to get logs for the schoolhouse, trips to the sawmill, and the making of a door, frames and trusses. He even worked on the schoolhouse Christmas day and all the rest of the week to complete the new log school on December 31, 1853, just in time for a New Year’s dance for the community.
“Subscriptions” or tuition payments were expected for each pupil. A subscription school provided a way for the pioneers to educate their children, since there were no public monies available to provide for education in the 1850s. But collecting the payment was difficult for Newt Goodale since money was scarce. Subscriptions could be paid in farm goods or any item agreed upon for barter. [1]
The school house did not face 2nd Street; it faced to the west on the little lane that exited 2nd Street exactly ½ mile from Washington Blvd.; the little lane led to a farm north of the school.
2 - 1863, Log, Mill Creek School
The site for the second schoolhouse was built on today’s SE intersection of the railroad tracks and W 2nd Street. At that time the railroad tracks did not exist, but there was a lane connecting W 2nd Street and W 12th Street called Mill Creek Lane. The schoolhouse faced on Mill Creek Lane as it exited 2nd Street and was called the Mill Creek School.
Mill Creek meandered two blocks south of the school, and at lunch time the children sometimes liked to take a break, go down the lane and swim in Mill Creek. The girls swam in their petticoats and hung them on the bushes to dry.
The Mill Creek School was larger than the Bingham School and had a large stone fireplace on one wall. When school was not in session, new immigrants were allowed to stay in the school house while they looked for a place to settle. [2]
In the fall of 1865 the teacher, Mrs. Amanda Bingham, made the first fire of the season in the great fireplace of the schoolhouse. The fireplace and the hearth extended out into the room, and the hearth was composed of a number of large rocks with spaces between them. When the fire began burning brightly, one of the boys called out, “Look at that big snake!”. Startled, the children looked up and saw a huge bull snake crawling out of a hole between the rocks of the hearth. The teacher screamed, the little girls began to cry, and the boys seemed quite unconcerned.
“That is just a bull snake; it won’t hurt anyone; it just eats frogs!” one of the boys called out. Mrs. Bingham called on a boy to open the door. The snake was about 6 feet long. It slowly emerged from the narrow space in the hearth and slowly crawled toward the open door. As soon as it left, the boy slammed the door shut.
Long afterwards when the little girls would be playing outside, they would remember the terrible snake and be on the lookout for it. When they were about to sit in the grass, one of them would say, “Look out, the snake may be there!” But they never saw the snake again. [3]
3 - 1866, Adobe, Lynne School
In about 1866, when it was known that the train tracks would soon replace Mill Creek Lane, the community built their third schoolhouse back on the site of the 1853 Bingham School. The third school was larger than the Mill Creek School; it was an adobe structure built by taxation and named Lynne School.
The name “Lynne” came from Scotland. In 1863 assistant Ogden postmaster, Walter Thompson, named the 2nd Street postal route Lynne after the town in Scotland where he was born. He said the beauty of the 2nd Street area reminded him of his beautiful native home.
This adobe schoolhouse was a step-up from the log structures; it had one big room that was plastered and whitewashed, and the roof was shingled. The school was heated with a tall iron stove. Nancy Jane Gates, Henry Tracy, and Peter Sherner taught at this school. Church meetings, irrigation meetings, dances, and spelling bees were held in the schoolhouse; it was the heart of the growing community. [4]
4 - 1877, Soft Brick, Lynne School
In 1877 the fourth schoolhouse of the community was built on the east corner of today’s Lynne School Lane and W 2nd Street. Frederick A. Miller, William B. Hutchens and Rasmus Erastus Christofferson were in charge of the construction of this brick school which retained the name Lynne School. It was 24 x 40 feet and was erected at a cost of about $2,300, furniture $300, total $2,600. Apostle F. D. Richards of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dedicated the school on December 9, 1877. The entrance was on the west side of the building. When this large brick school was completed, the adobe Lynne school was torn down. Laura Rogers served as a teacher at the brick Lynne School before her marriage to Stephen W. Perry in 1887. [5]
In 1889 free schools were established in Ogden. In 1890 Ogden City expanded its boundaries to annex the Lynne Precinct, and the Lynne School trustees had to turn their school over to the superintendent of Ogden City schools.
Ogden’s free school law of 1889 increased the school enrollment dramatically. The old brick Lynne School was not adequate for the large flux of new students, so the Ogden school board abandoned it. Judge Thomas D. Dee sold the brick Lynne School to Victor Reno Seniorfor $500, and Mr. Reno remodeled it into a private residence in 1892; the residence was destroyed by fire in the 1970s. [6]
Today’s Lynne School Lane roadway was once a dirt lane that led to the Reno farm north of the school, as pictured below; the lane existed from the 1850s to 2002. [7]
5 - Circa 1892, Brick, Five Points School
The Ogden School board built the fifth school of the area named Five Points School on the NW corner of Adams and 3rd Street in the early 1890s.
6 - Circa 1925, Brick, Lincoln School
About forty years later the Five Points School was updated and enlarged and renamed the Lincoln School in honor of Abraham Lincoln.
7 - 1950s, Lynne Elementary School
In the 1950s the Lincoln School was replaced with a new school at about 635 Grant Ave. named Lynne Elementary School. This was the seventh school of the area and the third one named Lynne.
8 - 2009, Heritage Elementary School
In 2009 Lynne Elementary was replaced by Heritage Elementary School, the eighth school of the area located at 373 S. 150 W.; this location is just two blocks south of the first log Bingham School built 156 years earlier. It was named Heritage for the historic heritage of 2nd Street and the Five Points Community.
[1] - Andrew Jensen, History of the Lynne Ward, manuscript, 1893, Church Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, Microfilm #LR 6405 2; Journal of Isaac Newton Goodale.
[2] - Andrew Jensen, History of the Lynne Ward; Autobiography of Mary Elizabeth Hutchens Sherner, transcribed by Dorothy Sherner, Mary Elizabeth-Her Stories, manuscript, 1933, p. 41, 58, 85.
[3] - Ibid, p. 71-72.
[4] - Andrew Jensen, History of the Lynne Ward.
[5] - Ibid. Obituary of Laura Perry.
[6] - Andrew Jensen, History of the Lynne Ward; Editor Milton R. Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak, The Weber County Chapter of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, copyright 1944, p. 534.
[7] - Aspen Acres subdivision is built on the former 1858 20-acre pioneer farm of William Stone that was valued at $200 in the 1860 census. In 1887 Ed Stone sold the farm to Victor Reno Senior, and the farm remained in the Reno family for 114 years until 2001 when it was sold for the Aspen Acres Subdivision.