Some of Stephanie Dean's second-grade students knew exactly why their school mascot is a bronco. When Xyta Lucas, of the Bella Vista History Museum, visited the classroom, she posed that question and several students had the answer. The site of Cooper Elementary School was once a riding stable.
Lucas had photos to show the class of both the old stable and the newer school building with a section of the upper floor resembling an old red barn. Most of the second graders weren't born when the stable was torn down in 2006.
The students didn't know about the old spring house which is still standing somewhere in the woods nearby. The spring house was once used to keep food cool, she explained, but then answering a question from her young audience, she explained that it would not be a good idea to go inside the structure. There could be animals living in there.
Dean's students may know more about Bella Vista than other Cooper students. Dean was raised in Bella Vista and tells her students what the town used to be like.
"I told them how my brother and I would walk down Dartmoor with our fishing poles in hand to go to the trout farm to fish," she wrote in an email recently. "Then we would visit the horses before walking to the paddle boats at the lake. They always wish they could experience the paddle boats. We would then go to the pool. I told them how we would have to gather our courage to jump in because it was always so cold since it was spring fed. The hard part was the walk uphill back home. They love to hear the stories. These stories are so strange to them because kids now can't just walk alone for distances like that. They also question the traffic along the road. When I explain it was mostly dirt roads, their mouths drop."
Lucas also displayed a set of photos taken of the buildings that used to be on the edge of Lake Bella Vista. All the students seemed to know the lake and were interested in the fire that destroyed the old dance pavilion. There were no injuries when it burned down, she assured one questioner.
Dean said the students loved hearing Lucas's talk about "The Plunge," the large swimming pool near the lake. Lucas explained that the pool was closed in 1990 and then filled in with dirt, but one sidewalk still exists close to the Veterans Wall of Honor.
"How did the water get out?" a student asked, and Lucas explained that it drained into the creek that runs behind the soccer fields.
Yes, she told another student, if you dig deep enough you might hit the concrete that formed the pool's floor. But it was pretty deep since people would dive into the pool.
The students might not have realized that Bella Vista was once a summer resort. There wasn't a school nearby, Lucas explained, because, during those early years, families came down for the summer and went back home for the school year. Many of those original cabins were destroyed in one of two large fires.
No, she's not sure what started that first fire in 1939, but someone burning leaves started the second fire in 1951, she told them.
Lucas spent a week visiting each of the second-grade classrooms with her mounted photographs. The kids seem to like hearing about the stables, she said. Most of them know Lake Bella Vista and can picture where the old dance pavilion was and that helps keep them interested, she said.
She will probably return to the school in the spring with a presentation about Wonderland Cave.
General News on 11/14/2018