Old Schoolhouse Burned Down : Nevada Hamlet Sends All Its Children to Jail

All the first-, second- and third-graders in this remote northeast Nevada town have been in jail for two weeks.

“It’s kind of scary,” second-grader Tammy Wright, 7, sighed, peering out from behind bars.

Third-grader Michelle Cone, 8, said, “I never thought I would ever go to jail.”

But third-grader Joe Pearson, 8, allowed that being behind bars “is pretty neat.”

The seven children are in jail because, in pre-dawn Oct. 7, the town’s 74-year-old school burned to the ground. Since the jail of Montello, population 193, hasn’t held a prisoner in more than two years, it was pressed into service as a temporary schoolhouse.

2 Classes in Old School

There were two classes in the old school: one for first through third grades, taught by Janet Adams, 40, and a second for fourth through eighth grades, taught by Janet’s husband, Paul, 42. The older class has 14 students.

After the fire, Justice of the Peace John Ellsworth, 65, suggested letting one class temporarily use the jail and the other use the tiny community church next door. No other buildings were available. Ellsworth had been using the 50-year-old jail as his courtroom.

Replacement desks, books and school supplies were delivered to Montello from Elko, the county seat 100 miles southwest, and school resumed immediately.

This week students will move out of the jail and church into two trailers that the Elko County School District will set up on a lot across from the old schoolhouse.

Retired Railroad Workers

Many residents here are retired railroad workers. The town, which at one point had a population of nearly 1,000, was built alongside the Southern Pacific tracks in Nevada’s stark high desert.

The two-story schoolhouse had eight classrooms and a gym and through the mid-1970s served as both high school and grammar school. High school students are now bused to Wells High School 50 miles away. Only two classrooms and the gym were in use in recent years. The rest of the schoolhouse was used for storage.

The school was insured, Janet Adams said, and a new school will be constructed to replace the old one.

“I sure hope nobody locks us in here by mistake,” first-grader David Lee Stratz, 6, said at his desk beneath a jail window.