Schoolhouse Returns With Ecology Lesson : Education: The old, wooden structure at Mt. Baldy Village is being renovated to serve as an environmental and historical learning center for the region.

The sound of hammering fills the crisp mountain air and a barn-raising spirit pervades Mt. Baldy Village, where a mostly volunteer effort is transforming the “Little Red Schoolhouse” into a regional environmental education center.

Through a coalition of Mt. Baldy Village residents, U.S. Forest Service officials, electricians, carpenters, educators, local historical society members and convict laborers, efforts are under way to restore the schoolhouse, which was closed in the mid-1970s because of earthquake safety concerns.

Project backers now envision a center that will serve as an educational, historical and ecological focal point for the region.

Erected by volunteers on Angeles National Forest land in 1921, the school--a single room for 30 years and not much bigger thereafter--served as a Jack-of-all-trades building for the tiny mountain village on the Los Angeles-San Bernardino county line, 10 winding miles north of Claremont.

“We had Community Club teas, town hall meetings, . . . dances, voted here,” said 81-year-old volunteer Dorothy Wisely, standing in the center of the schoolroom where long ago she taught dozens of children to read, write and do arithmetic.

But in 1976, amid talk of tearing it down, turning it into a museum or repairing it to meet earthquake safety standards, the shingle-sided school was closed and a new school was built down the hill. The old wooden structure fell into disrepair.

The improvement project, under way since 1988, involves renovating and modernizing the main building and a freestanding classroom in the back. The main structure will retain its small size but will be outfitted with elaborate displays and exhibits on mountain history and ecology.

It is being renovated through Forest Service grants totaling $98,000, and sizable donations of labor, materials and money from a variety of government and private sources.

The facility will be used in part by the Forest Service to replace its cramped information booth, which officials say is inadequate to meet the needs of the center’s 1 million visitors annually.

Also, Upland Unified School District officials, with a $275,000 National Science Foundation grant, plan to use the new facility as a base for a mountain research program that educators hope will become a model for environmental education throughout the country.

Forest Service officials plan to create exhibits on the flora, fauna, geology and meteorology of Mt. San Antonio, commonly known as Baldy or Old Baldy because of its slick appearance from a distance. At 10,064 feet, it is the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains.

“This center will provide an educational element to make it more meaningful when people visit,” said Don Stikkers, ranger in charge of the Mt. Baldy Ranger District. “There’s a lot of history in the Baldy area that people aren’t aware of.”

For example, America’s first Nobel Prize winner in science, Albert A. Michelson of Pasadena, conducted groundbreaking experiments on the speed of light on a Baldy foothill in the 1920s.

The idea of converting the building into a museum, visitor center and educational facility has come and gone several times since the mid-1970s.

At first, residents and former residents responded vociferously when the Forest Service, citing the earthquake safety problems, said the school would have to be closed.

After public meetings, phone calls and letters to U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), the school was closed but not torn down. The restoration idea languished because “it was always low on the priority list” of the Forest Service, said Stikkers.

During the past several years, he said, a combination of factors has revived the project, including the efforts of Forest Service official Barbara Croonquist, who is overseeing the renovation and is in charge of educational programs for the Mt. Baldy Ranger District. Another key factor, Stikkers said, is a new Forest Service program that emphasizes seeking matching grants as a way to fund worthy projects lacking adequate funds.

So far, $40,000 to $50,000 worth of labor and materials has come from sources ranging from the Upland school district, which already has refurbished the classroom behind the original building, to the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Camp 19 crew, made up of minimum-security-risk inmates living and working in the forest.

Because the project involves volunteer labor, Stikkers said, it could be another year before the facility is finished. Meanwhile, Croonquist said she is still looking for more volunteer carpenters, plumbers and landscapers.

Officials of the school district already call the facility their “forest classroom.” Their science grant pays for Project Terra Corps, a two-year program to educate teachers and students on environmental issues. Mt. Baldy is the principal site and students at 11 other locations throughout the state will compare their findings in environmental studies with those on Baldy.

Forest Service officials also hope to use the facility for a program proposed recently by musician Richie Havens, who is establishing West Coast chapters of his Natural Guard, an organization set up to provide environmental education particularly for disadvantaged children.

“It’s all going to come together at Mt. Baldy,” Stikkers said.