Bluff School / Jail / Library

It is still possible to see the window arches that mark this building as the remains of the Bluff school built in the 1890s.

However, it is difficult to imagine that what is left has anything to do with the imposing structure shown in photographs of the period.

The original elementary school was built in 1896, a lavish structure that rose in the center of town. This building was T-shaped with a bell tower, gabled roof, three classrooms and no indoor plumbing. The bell rope hung down through the roof into a small entrance hall.

Hilda Perkins, a former student said, "There'd be a class in the next row reciting and we'd be studying." The school was small, but they studied the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and English.

After the students finished all the schooling they could get in Bluff, up to eighth grade, they traveled twenty miles north every morning to attend high school in Blanding.

Around the early 1900s the schoolhouse caught fire and burned. There were only three small sections of the walls left. Around the 1960s the remains of the school were remodeled into the San Juan County Jail. The windows were filled in, and a new window and door were put in the north wall. A flat roof replaced the original gable roof. An addition was also built on the back of the jail. This had a sliding garage door and served as the fire station until around the 1980s.