The Byrd School — what is now an apartment complex at the corner of Steilacoom Boulevard and Lakewood Drive — was the first recognized school in all of Pierce County. It planted the seed for what would later become the
A monument marks this school built with the aid of prominent settler and mill operator Andrew Byrd.
There's an exhibit about the history of the Clover Park School District at the Lakewood Historical Society Museum that allows you to take a look at where it all began.
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The Byrd School was built in 1855 and housed about 20 students of all ages in one room. It operated for 30 years before settlers around Lakewood began complaining that it wasn’t centrally located. They wanted a school around the western edge of Steilacoom Lake.
In 1885 they got what they wanted.
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The Byrd school burned to cinders in 1885, the victim of a so-called accident that remains debatable to this day. The school burned down in a fire one weekend and was replaced by one closer to the lake. The children were told to bring all their books home the same weekend the fire occurred.
Coincidence?
Lakewood was the Wild West after all, so the solution seemed logical by those standards.
Independent frontier schools began sprouting up around The Lakes District, what Lakewood was known as back then, Teenagers would have to take the cross-prairie trolley car to classes in the City of Destiny.
Some went to Stadium High School while families with more money sent their children to private schools. That system worked when the numbers were small. But Lakewood prairie homes were increasing at a rapid rate. They wanted schools of their own. Elementary schools operated independent of each other.
A clerk and other settlers saw the need for an institute of higher learning — a junior high. Iva Alice Mann, referred to by many as the mother of the Clover Park School District, helped combine the Park Lodge, Custer, Lake City, Lakeview and American Lake South schools into one district.
The Clover Park School District was born.
