Click on the photos below for a larger image.

Hubert and Miriam Fonder, possibly on their wedding day in 1862. Miriam was burned in an accident when she was a child. From a history of the Fonder family by Kathy Fonder Wait.

Side View of the Fonder School building, which was completed in 1884. From a history on the Fonder family by Kathy Fonder Wait

Fonder School 8th Graders 1933.
Back Row L to R: Emmon Gardman, Harold Mickelson, Florence Larreau, Edward Johnson. Front Row: Florence Carlson (Teacher), Donald Mickelson. Douglas County History Research Center #654.04.

Front door of the Fonder School built in 1884. The building is now used as part of the Pinery Water and Waste Water District. Photo from history of the Fonder family by Kathy Fonder Wait.

.....Fonder School has the distinction of being one of the two oldest school buildings still standing in Douglas County (along with Indian Park.) The rhyolite building was constructed in 1884, after a fire destroyed the log building which held the original classes of Fonder School.

.....The school is named for Miriam Donegan Fonder, who was born in Ohio, grew up in Iowa, lost her mother at age 13, got her teaching certificate at 20, and as a single woman came to Colorado with her uncles in 1861, at the age of 26. She worked in a boarding house near Idaho Springs, where she met her husband, Hubert Fonder. Within six months, the couple were married at the Nailand Saloon in Blackhawk, and Hubert joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. Miriam followed Hubert's regiment across the Front Range as a cook and laundress. Their first baby was born while marching over the divide region between Colorado Springs and Castle Rock.  Hubert got sent to Kansas, and after living in the mountains alone with a baby for a few months, Miriam realized she wasn't going to make it alone with a child, so she headed to Kansas to be reunited with her husband.

.....When Hubert was discharged in 1865, the Fonders returned to Colorado and settled on Cherry Creek, 27 miles south of Denver, in December. When they arrived, one of the neighbors, thinking no one would mind, had moved their cabin onto his property, but he generously allowed them to stay there and gave them $50 to build a new cabin when it was feasable.

.....Hubert and other men in the area built a small cabin. The Fonders farmed along Cherry Creek for a while. The couple had three more children before Hubert was kicked in the head by a horse he was trying to break and died in 1871. Miriam, expecting their fifth child, was left with the farm. Her sister and brother-in-law came to help her. During the first winter after Hubert's death, they lost 20 head of cattle in a bad snowstorm. Miriam sold the farm and moved to Spring Valley in 1875 to be near her brother. She may have taught school there. She sold the Spring Valley ranch in 1880 and moved to Glenwood Springs to live with her adult children. She died in 1927 at the age of 91.

.....Mrs. Fonder found time to start a school on her farm while raising her 5 children. The school, located only one quarter mile north of her house, was named after her. Other women also made contributions to the school district in the early years.

.....One of those women was Miss Jennie Stone, who came to the Fonder area with her parents in 1870. She was one of the first teachers at the Fonder School, and she ran a successful dairying operation too. One day in the 1870's, while Miss Stone was the teacher, the school was visited by some of the Native Americans who used to camp along Cherry Creek. The leader of the group walked in, picked up a book (apparently upside down) and looked at it. While the children and the teacher stared intently at their work, pretending nothing was wrong and that they weren't totally frightened, the man examined the book, set it down and he and his group left.

.....Children from all over the area north of Franktown, including the settlement of Pine Grove (later Parker) attended the Fonder school for many years. When the school burned down in 1883, David McMurdo was hired to build a new one out of rhyolite. The stone building was completed in 1884, and was used until 1949, when the school was consolidated and the eight students in attendance were sent to other schools.

.....The building, which sits west of Highway 83, near Ponderosa High School, was used as a storage shed until the 1970's, when it was purchased by the Denver Southeast Suburban Water and Sanitation District. It is now owned by the Pinery Water and Waste Water District, which uses it for offices.