Tarkington Prairie Had Fifteen Schools Before Its Contested Consolidation

Burton B. Tarkington brought his family to what is now Liberty County in the 1820s. The broad prairie he settled took his name. Farm communities lay far apart, and many built their own schools. Records count 15 separate schools at Tarkington Prairie during the century from 1857 to 1957.

State rules started talk of merging the schools in the 1920s. Voters approved consolidation in 1931. The site for the new central campus split the community and led to court fights. A new high school seemed to end the dispute, but a fire of suspicious origin destroyed it a few years later. A replacement was finished in 1938, with homes for teachers nearby.

After the 1949 Gilmer-Aikin laws raised the chance of a merger with Cleveland, voters formed an independent district. Tarkington had no high school for African American students, so they rode buses to Cleveland until the schools integrated. The district remains the center of the rural settlements, and there is still no town within its large borders. Tarkington Prairie's center is a school system, not a downtown.