This striking white school looks ready for eager students, but the deep stillness and the big weeds in the schoolyard make this yet another Oregon Ghost. It's located some 30 miles east of Prineville, Oregon, lost in the piney forests of the Ochoco Mountains. It's elevation of 3630 feet is almost exactly that of downtown Bend.

A brief history of this area is gotten from Phil Brogan's classic book "East of the Cascades," published 1964 by Binford and Mort of Portland..... In 1872, a rancher and prospector by the name of Howard found gold in Sissors Creek, "...a stream which held golden flakes and occasional nuggets." The gold led to the establishment of what Brogan called "an active mining community for many years." He says the mining boom faded in the 1890s. Meanwhile, the Howard Post Office was a place "that was to migrate from place to place through the years and eventually disappear." It was long-gone by the time Brogan was doing his field research in the early 1960s. As far as the mines themselves, if one hikes less than 2 miles northeast from the site of the schoolhouse, they will find a number of old mine shafts and diggings scattered around at elevation from about 3850 to 4100 feet (beware of private land, however).