Farmers School
The District 145 school at 167th and Central opened in 1875 and was called the Farmers School as most students were the children of local farmers. The school was centrally located at the top of a hill on the east side of Central, north of 167th street to serve the small farming population in the area.
The school was a white frame structure with a small front porch. The schoolyard was surrounded by a tall wooden fence with a large tree about 12 feet behind the school house. With the opening of the Oak Forest Poor Farm, the center of population shifted to the 159th and Cicero area. The Farmers school closed in 1925 and was replaced with a larger Arbor Park School (named after the subdivision it was built in) just south of 159th on Forest Avenue. Lets look at the site of the school first on a 1900 Oak Forest Map:
And now the area in 1938:
Zooming in on the location of the school (circled) we see several paths, one going past what may be remnants of the school at the top of a hill which was closed 13 years earlier in 1925.
Visiting the site we found a large hill in that same area with several old large trees but no definite identification of the schools location. Lets look at several of the potential sites. First the high spot in that area of the woods:
Next a large old tree in the higher area:
another large old tree in the higher area:
And an older tree in the higher area that has lost some of its majesty.
