An elderly woman’s $10,250 bid for the long-closed Cuervo School in the Route 66 ghost town of Cuervo, N.M., was accepted by the Santa Rosa School Board, according to a story in the print edition of the Guadalupe County Communicator, based in Santa Rosa.
Flora Page, who graduated from eighth grade at the stone structure, submitted the winning bid in December. He age wasn’t listed in the current story, but noted she is an octogenarian.
The newspaper reported:
The Cuervo school once drew students from far and wide, but as the town dwindled in the interstate age, so too did its school. These days, the schoolhouse is just a shell of its old self. The stonework has stood the test of time, but the roof is partially collapsed. Flocks of birds have taken over the rafters, rodents run amok, and both have left evidence of their presence on what’s left of the school’s wooden flooring. Meanwhile, years of summer monsoons have created deep arroyos creeping dangerously close to the old structure. […]
“My memories in Cuervo are good memories,” Page said at the time, saying she hopes to keep the building standing and refurbish it for a gallery or some other type of use for perpetuity.
An earlier Communicator report said her father was a stonemason who helped build the school.
Doc Chapman, a commenter on an earlier report about the Cuervo school going up for sale, said he went by the property on Sept. 14 and saw the windows were boarded up and “No Trespassing” signs posted.
We did notice that there are a lot of survey stakes and boundery markers that have just been put up all along the road in front of the properties. One one piece of property there is several 100 feet of 6 foot chain link fence.
That’s a lot more apparent activity at the site than I’ve seen in my 10 or so years of driving by. So maybe something good will actually happen to the property.
Oh, and that $10,250? It was used to buy musical instruments for children in Santa Rosa schools.
I should have stated that the fence has not been put upyet. I take that it and the stakes have something in common.
It would be nice if he historic society would come in and at least maintain the old water tank and building that is there for the well and anything else that can be saved.
We tried looking for property owners by the taxing authority but they do not have a website that allows searches
Any word if there is work being done on the old school or what the purpose of all the chain link fence and survey stakes are for
I did call the taxing authority and other than the school sellling ,They did not know anything about the fence material or the survey stakes either
Maybe we can get back by there this summer and check it out again