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This ad appeared in the August 19^th, 1897 edition of the Castle Rock Record Journal, announcing the opening of the new Castle Rock High School.

Cantril School as it appeared in an early photograph from the newspaper. Photo by F. Reistle of Denver, CO. Douglas County History Research Center #678.06.

The first Douglas County High School. Students attended school here after the high school classes were removed from Cantril. Made of brick, this building burned down in 1909 and a rhyolite school was built to replace it. c. 1910. Douglas County History Research Center #96050

Photopostcard of the Douglas County High School c. 1925. This building replaced a brick one that burned down. It is now used as administration offices for the Town of Castle Rock and the Douglas County School District. Douglas County History Research Center #93004-003.

4^th grade students posing by the Cantril School. October 1915. Junior Teacher: Miss Grace Sayer, Senior Teacher: Miss Gertrude Kelly. Douglas County History Research Center
#93004-002.

Cantril School was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the Douglas County Historical Society. Cantril School, North View June 2000. Douglas County History Research Center.

Creation Of A New School District
.....One of the earliest districts organized in Douglas County was Castle Rock, District 5. The 1865-66 school year saw eight students attending school near present day Castle Rock. These students may have attended school in a private home, as there are no records from the period which identify a school building. Castle Rock was not organized as a town until 1874, when lots were sold at the townsite and it became the Douglas County seat.

First School Building Erected in Castle Rock
.....Also in 1874, the school district was reorganized as District 11 and a two story wooden schoolhouse was built between Lewis, Cantril, Third and Fourth Streets. The building had a barbed-wire fence surrounding it to keep out the livestock which freely roamed the area.
.....Ten years after the construction of the school at Third and Cantril, Douglas County High School classes were added. This high school was the first in the county, and offered the highest level of education available in the county at the time. Students were charged admission of one dollar per month if they came from "outside the district." (presumably the Castle Rock District.) Families from all over the county sent their children to live in Castle Rock so that they could attend the high school during the winter. In mid-November of 1896, the wooden building which had served as the Castle Rock school for 22 years burned to the ground, reportedly due to a defective flue.

Cantril School Comes to Life
.....An election was held to appropriate funds, and bids were taken for a new school to be built in Castle Rock. Many builders submitted proposals for the new building. Robert Rauschlaub, who held the first architect's license in the state, and had already designed the Central City Opera House and Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as all the schools in Denver, consulted with the Castle Rock School Board on the designs for the new school building. They chose a design by an architect named William Quayle.
.....Within one week in August of 1897, the new schoolhouse was completed, dedicated, and put to use. It had taken a total of ten months to decide to build a new school, choose a site, design the structure, and construct one of the most architecturally significant buildings in Castle Rock, Cantril School. Elementary through high school classes were again held there, until a separate Douglas County High School was built in the 600 block of Wilcox Street in 1907.
.....The brick high school burned down in 1909, and a rhyolite one was constructed to replace it. After the departure of the High School students in 1907, Cantril School hosted primary grades and junior high schoolers until 1961, when the Castle Rock Jr. High School was built. The Dewey and Glade schools consolidated with Castle Rock in 1914 and 1918 to form the combined district 38.
.....In 1967, there was again a shift in student population, as the new Douglas County High School was completed on Front Street. Students in grades four through six were sent the old Douglas County High School on Wilcox Street, while Kindergarten through third grade remained at Cantril. When Castle Rock Elementary was built in 1983, the grades were put back together in one building, and Cantril was converted into offices.
.....The Cantril School building stands on the same block as the original wooden structure, and is made of rhyolite, a stone quarried around the Castle Rock area. The rough hewn stones create an aura of permanence as the school sits atop the "schoolhouse hill" as it used to be called. The barbed-wire fence is now chain link, which is designed more to keep children from wandering out into the street than keep cattle from wandering into the schoolhouse.
.....The hipped roof is supported by decorative scroll brackets, and the bell tower (with bell cast in 1881) is supported by a roman archway over the door. A second roman arch was built during the 1922 addition. Other additions, in 1957 and 1962 added space to the building, and an addition in the 1930's caused a furor in the town because rhyolite could not be obtained to build it, and it was made of another building material. In 1984, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the Douglas County Historical Society.