School opening date 1928.
The school closed 1963.
The buildings are gone and the property is now a trailer park called:
Sunset Landing
100 SW Evening Loop
Lake City, FL 32024

School opening date 1928.
The school closed 1963.
The buildings are gone and the property is now a trailer park called:
Sunset Landing
100 SW Evening Loop
Lake City, FL 32024

Jo Ann NOEGEL Nash says that the first lunchroom was a log cabin, probably built in 1928 by IE Hunter. When the old log cabin lunchroom was torn down, this modern lunchroom (see photo) was a very welcomed replacement.

Lake Lona student Donald Barfield said: One of the ladies that cooked food in the lunchroom was Mrs Brinkley. I wonder if she was related to our teacher Mrs Evelyn Witt, her maiden name was Brinkley.

Lake Lona student Cy Perkins said:
Here's a pic of Lake Lona's fine Christmas Play in 1959... Henry Nash, Laymon Brannon, Donald Barfield, Charles Phillips, Steve Thomas, Willie Floyd, Cy Perkins, Bridget Amerson, Nan and Cindy Huchingson, Ronnie Hunter, Nancy and Mary Ellen Jarvis...

Lake Lona student Cy Perkins said:
Future 1971 Columbia High School Seniors that were in this 1959 Lake Lona Christmas Play... Wille Floyd, Cy Perkins, Danny Peek, Ronnie Hunter, Elbert Barwick, Richard Bales..Standing behind us is Bridget Amerson, Nan Huchingson, Nancy Jarvis, Suzanne Tompkins and Elaine Green. We all received Tony's for our production!!! ;-) Mrs Evelyn Witt and Mr T. J. Geiger (Maurice's father) were the only two teachers in the whole school!!

Mrs Bell operated a tiny country store right next door to the school where us kids would go to buy all our favorite penny candies and my personal favorite, a popular Made in Georgia, Southern soft drink was the: RC Cola & Nehi Grape or Nehi Orange. Yeah it was pronounced "knee high." The cost per bottle... 10 cents and then we would get money back for the empty bottle (I think we got 3 cents for the empty). I loved those fruit flavored soft drinks and the bottles were the largest of all the bottled soft drinks, so it was the most drink you could buy with your dime. I think the most popular drink and snack combo, at the time, was the 16oz RC & a moonpie. You really got the most for your 10 or 15 cents that the combo cost.

1963 student Wendell Stephens said: This is what I remember about Mrs. Bell's store. You could get just about anything there except beer or cigarettes. Gasoline, milk, bread, a few canned goods, sugar, flour, the necessities. There was a kerosene tank outside, with a hand crank pump. She even sold .22 ammo, after I was allowed to hunt on my own, I would collect soda bottles to buy a box, $1.04, that was 52 bottles @.02 cents per bottle. There was a glass display case to the right as you entered that held the candy bars, to the left was one of those old style drink coolers that held the drinks upright, and you reached down into it to choose. Nehi Orange, Grape, and Strawberry. Frosty Root Beer (still my favorite). And one called "Upper 10", a lot like a 7up.There was a freezer that held popsicles, nutty buddies, ice cream sandwiches, and those small cups of ice cream. Mrs. Bell was a widow I think, and when she sold the store, circa 1967-68, she married "Doc" Isom, and moved to Lake City. Doc would often help her around the store. They sold the store to a family named Davis, who ran it as a family business until at least 1973. There was an old wagon wheel set vertically into the ground at the corner of US 90 and Thomas Rd, with area mailboxes mounted on it. People would pull up and rotate the wheel to their mailbox.

As of Feb 2015:
This photo of Bell's country store is from Google Maps April 2009. By the next Google Maps photo (taken in 2013) Bell's country store building was demolished and is completely gone. Currently (2015) the Columbia County Tax Appaiser assessed the property as: 12.5 acres of Timberland (no buildings) and the property is owned by: Mohammad A Faisal (Faisal Family Limited).

The school consisted of:
* main wooden building built 1928 (with 2 classrooms in front & sometimes the auditorium was a classroom)
* wooden classroom portable (added early 1960's)
* wooden lunchroom buliding
* concrete block boys & girls bathroom out back.

Drawings of:
* inside main building
* school property layout

Many bus photos were shown to a few students that rode Mr Wood's bus. They selected this bus as looking most like the bus he drove.
NOTE: Mr Wood's bus had yellow fenders.

What year did Lake Lona School start having a bus?

Mr Wood, bus driver:
In 1963, when I went to Lake Lona School it was Mr W.I. Wood (Washington "Wash" Ives Wood), age 57, that was the bus driver. He was married to: Ouida Bess Revels. Sometimes his son Wash Hardy Wood, age 20, drove the bus.

Every school day, Mr Wood drove the rural back roads picking up kids at their homes and farms to take them to Lake Lona School. Actually there were more farms than homes in this rural farming community. On the 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 Fed US Census the area around Lake Lona was called: Precinct #5, Shalmanezer. People living in that area would be listed on the US Census as living in: Township of Shalmanezer; County of Columbia; and State of Florida.

Wendell Stephens said: About Mr Wood's bus. The bus we are discussing was bus No. 1, and that's the way it was stenciled on the side of the bus near the door. I remember this because there was a girl that would say she rode "Bus No One". It was the only bus that had "No." in front of the digits. Also Wendell remembers that Mr Wood drove his bus onto the school property from US-90 so that when the bus stopped the bus door was facing the school. Wendell would exit the bus and it was a straight shot to the school front door.

In 1963 and earlier years, everybody living around the Lake Lona School area lived on sandy, dusty, bumpy, unpaved roads (more like back roads). For us kids, riding Mr Wood's bus down those roads was a deafening experience with the sound of every nut & bolt in the bus rattling so loud we could hardly hear each other talk. NOTE: HWY US-90 was the only 2 lane paved road in the area.

Some kids transferred buses at Lake Lona:
In 1963, my cousin was in junior high school when I was in the 3rd grade at Lake Lona Elementary. He would ride to Lake Lona on Mr Wood's bus then transfer to Mrs Taylor's bus and continue on to Columbia Jr High School in Lake City on US-90.

How did kids get to school when it opened in 1928?
In 1928, yellow school buses hadn't been invented yet. The yellow school bus color was officially selected in 1939. I would guess many Lake Lona kids living within a couple miles walked or rode bicycles to school. Further away, some of these rural farm kids may have even rode a horse to school. The first Lake Lona school bus may have been a horse drawn wagon. Maybe some kids were driven to school in the family automobile or maybe the farm tractor?

Final thing about Mr Wood the bus driver.
He demolished Lake Lona School and built a trailer park.
On the 1940 US Fed Census Mr Wood occupation was listed as carpenter working at school house (most likely Lake Lona School). Then he was a Lake Lona bus driver. He was also a farmer and also a Reverend.

After Lake Lona Elementary School closed down in 1963 Mr Wood bought the school property and demolished the main school building. He transformed the lunchroom into Lake Lona Community Center where 4-H meetings, Christmas socials and even Lake Lona student Cy Perkins' band "The Travelers" played music there on occasion. The community center was torn down after a number of years.

Mr Wood turned the previous school property into a trailer park. He and his wife lived on the property operating the trailer park together. Mr Wood moved the portable building that was Mrs Witt's 1963 classroom to the Columbia County Fairgrounds on Branford Hwy and was used as a food concession selling burgers & hot dogs, etc. The concrete block boys & girls bathroom is the only Lake Lona School building that avoided the wrecking ball. The bathroom building was already plumbed with plenty of water, and a solid structure to be remodeled to a laundry/office in 1993 for the current trailer park. That building is still there today, standing in it's original Lake Lona School footprint.

Lake Lona Elementary School first opened it's doors in 1928, just one year before the Great Depression.

The Great Depression started in Aug 1929, then Wall Street crashed Oct 1929. The economy reached bottom in the winter of 1932–33; then came four years of very rapid growth until 1937, when the Recession of 1937 brought back 1934 levels of unemployment. It was 1939 when relief from the Great Depression started to be felt all over the country.

Then in 1939 we go right into WWII till it ends in 1945. All production of domestic goods was halted and switched toward war goods production. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. In a state of "total war", the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust (during which approximately 11 million people were killed) and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres (during which approximately one million people were killed, including the use of two nuclear weapons in combat), it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history.

Then there was the Korean War 1950 to 1953.

Little Lake Lona School like the little engine that could, saw another war start in 1955. The Vietnam War broke out. By the time Lake Lona School closed in 1963, America's involvement in Vietnam was esculating. The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent Communism from speading, starting with stopping it from expanding into South Vietnam. America thought it could bomb the communist out of that country. In 1968 the Tet Offensive changed America's mind about winning that war. The end of the war came with the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975. The following year North & South Vietnam were reunited. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese service members and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.