Back to the Skeleton Bridge School

Happy Haunted Humpday II!

Today, Burt and Ivy are joining Marfi at Marfitopia for some creepy back to school fun. 

Burt and Ivy have planned a visit to a nearby school.

Burt packed a few essentials for the twelve minute drive.

Wonder who will be snacking on the orange? 

As you might imagine, the school we will be visiting has an interesting address. Driving around I've always noticed highway signs for Skeleton Bridge Road and assumed it got it's name from some type of bridge where you could see all the supporting structure. Sort of like how all the inside workings are visible on a skeleton watch. Nope, I was totally wrong. As it turns out the road was named after a bridge that once crossed Skeleton Creek. The exact origin of the name is unknown but it is rumored that early settlers found human bones along it's banks and just started referring to it as Skeleton Creek. The bridge is long gone and it's now called Daggett's Creek but the road remains. 

So what would you name a school on Skeleton Bridge Road?

  Can you imagine putting that on a job application?

 It's not Hogwarts but it is a cute, one-room school that has been restored to it's pre-war state. HM is standing between the utilities. The heating came from the wood burning stove on the left and I assume they made do with the light from the large windows until electricity was invented. A pottery crock, seen on the right, supplied the only indoor source of water. It had to be hand pumped every day from the well outside the front door and carried into the school. Wonder why the outhouses weren't restored, ha! 

Too bad there aren't any students for Burt and Ivy to frighten. However, it looks like the last teacher could have been plenty scary to anyone who didn't behave.

A former teacher and some of her students.

This is Robert Plummer, a former student and the current owner who has restored the school to it's former glory.  He's a talented pianist and after entertaining us with quite a few tunes, gave us a tour of his collection of rare classic cars. Spanning every decade in the 20th century, it includes his very first car, a pink 1957 Ford Thunderbird! Both the school and car collection are free and open to the public on Saturdays in July and August from 10:00 am to noon. Thanks for the tour, Mr. Plummer!

Finally, as long as we were in the neighborhood we couldn't pass up the Bare Bones Brewery. There's nothing like a brewer with a macabre sense of humor!

As if this all wasn't creepy enough, Skeleton Bridge Road actually leads to the village of Butte des Morts, which means Mound of Death in French. (Honestly, I'm not making this stuff up!) It overlooks the lake with the same name and the lake got it's name from a prehistorical burial mound that once stood in the middle of a prairie, about 300 feet in from the shoreline. It was twelve feet tall, sixty feet long and thirty-five feet wide and was thought to be one of the largest in the state. Unbelievably, in 1863 the Northwestern Railway torn it down and used the contents as fill for the railroad bed they were building through the area! You be the judge, is that creepy or just disgusting?

I'm thinking both.

See you next week and thanks for stopping by!