Photo courtesy of Joan Benson-Kennedy – The Old Berthoud School (still standing) was located on the Lewis Cross homestead on the Little Thompson River bottom. The school is shown prior to 1914 when a second room was added to the rear of the building.

The Berthoud community lays claim to the 13^th school district formed in Larimer County.  School District No. 13 was organized in 1874 and drew first through eighth-grade students from an attendance area that extended a mile or two in every direction from present-day Berthoud. Since most of the valley’s early residents lived on farms and ranches along the Little Thompson River bottom, the district’s school building was a small log cabin (no longer standing) on the homestead of Lewis Cross. The cabin sat on the south bank of Little Thompson creek and served as a place for church services and community meetings.

After homesteaders began to file claims on land above the river bottom, the population of the school district became more equally distributed leading District No. 13 to be reorganized in 1882. As a result of the reorganization, the portion of the school district above the river bottom remained District No. 13 while the “break-away” area of the school district near the river bottom became a new district identified as District No. 22.

In the early years, Larimer County school districts were numbered in the order in which they were formed. Ironically, the newly organized section of the original district became District No. 22 even though it was the site of the first school in the Little Thompson Valley.

The oldest and first-organized school district in Larimer County was Namaqua (est. 1868) followed by Old St. Louis, Hillsborough, Fort Collins, Sherwood, Pleasant Valley, Weldon, Livermore, Virginia Dale, and Berthoud.  A handful of the early school districts are unknown.

Some of the country schools in the Berthoud area included Lone Tree, Red Rock, Blore, Culver, Pinedale, Meadow Hollow, Lakeview, Sunnyside, and Whipple. The Sunnyside and Whipple schools were located nearby in Weld County.

Between the time that District No. 13 was reorganized into two school districts and the original one-room school on the Little Thompson River bottom became the school building of District No. 22, several other new districts had been formed in Larimer County. They included Stratton Park (Poudre Park) in 1875, Box Elder (1875), Pleasant View (1875), Harmony (1878), Stove Prairie (1878), Pinewood (1879), and Lone Tree (1880).

Eventually, Larimer County contained 65 school districts under the supervision of one County Superintendent. Each individual district was operated by an elected school board that paid bills and employed and dismissed teachers.  Since nearly all of the school districts were located in rural areas, it was common for teachers to board in nearby homes. Most of the teachers were young, unmarried women who were vastly underpaid. Many of them only held their positions for a few years.

The Old Berthoud School, a country school that served students in grades one through eight, was in operation from 1874 to 1949. During that time students wishing to further their educations by attending 9^th through 12^th grades went to school in the town of Berthoud where they paid tuition.

The history of the Old Berthoud School over its eight decades of operation is a tale for another time.