Elgin Schoolhouse

Before the railroad, only a handful of ranchers and homesteaders lived in Meadow Valley Wash, but when the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (now part of the Union Pacific) was built through Meadow Valley Wash in the early 1900s, the population ballooned. Not only was traditional railroading highly labor-intensive, but many workers brought their families as well. This in turn led to a demand for schools.

In 1922 Reuben Bradshaw, the son of an original homesteader, donated land and built a school. The absence of housing in the vicinity initially made recruiting a teacher difficult, but when teachers' quarters were added in 1924, recruitment was never a problem. As was the standard at the time, teachers were unmarried women. They often ended up marrying into the community, at which point it became necessary (again, according to the standards of the time) to find a new teacher.

The schoolhouse graduated its last student in 1967, when school bus service had become available to Caliente and Panaca. The building reverted to the Bradshaw family and, after being used as a residence, fell into disuse. It was restored by the Bradshaws in the late 1990s and offered to the Nevada Division of State Parks in 2005. Upon its acceptance, it became a State Historic Site, and the interior was restored to what it looked like when it was an active school. The books, desks, playground equipment, and so on are not necessarily original, but are typical of the era.