Throughout this year Missoula is celebrating its 150th birthday.
In its early days a sawmill, Missoula Mills, was built near the Clark Fork, diverting water from Rattlesnake Creek.
Not far from this landmark and Missoula’s beginnings, is another, Prescott School.
In conjunction with Missoula’s centennial, in 1983, the Rattlesnake PTA published a booklet about the history of the area’s schools. Bonnie Malingo compiled Information on Prescott School, some of which follows.
“1891 marked the year a school was provided to meet Missoula’s growing pains in the Rattlesnake Valley.” The original Prescott School started as the East Side School in 1891 in a grocery store on the corner of Harrison and Vine.
In 1893, the school district purchased land for $500 from the Missoula Real Estate Association on which to build another East Side School ( current location at 1100 Harrison) costing $4,000.
“In 1902, the Daily Missoulian reports, ‘East Side School was to be named Prescott School.’”
In 1948, Superintendent Porter, showed preliminary drawings of a newly proposed school building for Prescott. “In the spring of 1951 the new Prescott School was ready for occupancy.”
For many years, Prescott served 1-8th grades. A variety of grade configurations were also used depending on the circumstances.
Prescott, a special school to many, was closed and leased in 2004 to the private Missoula International School. The lease will expire in 2017. MCPS needs to reopen Prescott for its proper use of educating our public school students. Enrollment both in the Rattlesnake and city-wide is increasing and our schools are at capacity.
The section on Prescott history in the booklet mentioned above ends with the following sentence, “In closing, one of the finest things one can experience at Prescott is the tremendous interest and support from the parents and the public in the area.”
Jeanne Joscelyn
Prescott and neighborhood school advocate
