HELENA — The 130-year-old Baxendale Schoolhouse is continuing to teach students, but now as a lab for trade work in historic preservation.
“For me, historic preservation is really about giving back to my community here in Montana,” said Dylan Yonce, an intern with Preserve Montana.
(See how Baxendale's new students are learning how to preserve historic properties.)
The schoolhouse provides a year-round preservation classroom where individuals are leaving their mark on Montana’s history.
“It is really fun to get that hands-on experience," Yonce said. "Before the trade corps, I did not have experience working with tools and now I feel like I can you know operate a chainsaw.”
Built between 1895 and 1897, the Baxendale was originally located near the Holter sawmill at the town site of Baxendale near Helena.
The schoolhouse now belongs to Preserve Montana and serves as a classroom for preservation interns like Dylan and trade corps members.
“We moved it to this location to be able to turn it into a hands-on carpentry and preservation trades learning lab and are in the process of rehabilitating it now," said Jenny Buddenborg, the executive director of Preserve Montana.
The schoolhouse moved three times before its current location and was used as a school, polling place, and antiques shop.
The Baxendale Schoolhouse illustrates the resilience of historic buildings.
Emory Padgett is a restoration specialist and team leader for the Trade Corps and feels schoolhouse restorations have taught him the most.
"Schoolhouses are really an essential part of Montana history for all these rural communities, especially,“ said Padgett.
Although the Baxendale’s porch is being taken apart and paint is being scraped from its historic walls, Padgett says, "Just having these still around is so important because you can have something in a history book, but it is not the same as having this physical place on the land.”
The restoration of the schoolhouse is 85 percent complete and just needs 50 thousand more dollars to keep its story alive.
