Historic schoolhouse makes trip across town to new home

Last Wednesday, the 153-year-old District 6 school house was moved from Ambush Park to its new location at the Swift County Historical Museum on U.S. Highway 12.
At its new location, it will be able to be used more frequently for programs and show the public what it was like in a school house in the late 1800s.
Last year, Swift County Historical Society Director Gary Mills requested that ownership of the building, which was built in 1871, be turned over to the county and relocated next to society’s museum. It is one of the oldest buildings in the county.
Through its history  in the county it has been in several locations. It was initially built on the northeast corner of the courthouse lot in Benson and sat next to the original wood structure of the first county courthouse.
It was the first building on the block with the first courthouse, a wooden structure, joining it in 1876. It was the second school house built in the county with the first one District 1, built in Kerkhoven, but it was demolished in the early 1900s, Mills told the Monitor-News last December.
“As far as I can tell, this is the oldest existing fully structural public building in the county,” Mills said. “There are some log cabins, but those are private. This is the only public building that I know of.”

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