The 1874 Schoolhouse and Its Unverified Shadow
9300 E Union Ave, Englewood, CO 80111
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Active public school. No public access to campus. Exterior visible from Union Ave.
Access
Limited Access
Paved road and parking areas along the school perimeter
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1874 · Colorado State Register of Historic Properties · Colorado Frontier Education · 1874 One-Room Schoolhouse · Cherry Creek School District No. 19
The original Cherry Creek Schoolhouse stood on Parker Road approximately half a mile northwest of the Arapahoe Road intersection, constituting the entirety of School District No. 19 — a district covering roughly 25 square miles north of the Douglas County line. Built in 1874 for approximately $800, it was a one-room structure of the type that served rural Colorado communities throughout the territorial and early statehood era.
The school operated until 1951, when consolidation ended its use as an active educational building. It sat in relative obscurity until 1969, when Cherry Creek High School purchased the structure and moved it to the high school campus. A restoration project returned the building to something close to its 1870s appearance, and it now functions as a museum classroom used for historical education programs.
Cherry Creek High School itself is one of the largest high schools in Colorado by enrollment, serving the Greenwood Village and Centennial areas. The campus occupies a substantial footprint in the Arapahoe County suburban landscape that developed rapidly from the 1960s onward. History Colorado has documented the Cherry Creek Schoolhouse as part of its effort to catalog significant Colorado historic sites.
Sources
The legend is precise where it needs to be and vague where the truth would be most verifiable. A teacher beat a student to death inside the schoolhouse sometime in the 1930s. The student was a girl. That much is consistent across the accounts that have circulated among Cherry Creek students for decades.
No historical record — no court filing, no newspaper account, no school district record — has been found to confirm a homicide in the Cherry Creek Schoolhouse in the 1930s or at any other time. The original report on Shadowlands acknowledges the lack of documentation. History Colorado, which has documented the schoolhouse as a historic site, does not reference any violent incident in its records.
What students describe experiencing: screams audible from outside the locked schoolhouse. A girl moving across the greenbelt adjacent to the campus and then simply not being there. Missing school supplies — items that cannot be found, rather than items found in unexpected places.
The schoolhouse's physical circumstances contribute to the atmosphere. It is an 1874 structure surrounded by a modern high school campus — architecturally incongruous, locked against public entry, and visually isolated in a way that older buildings on active institutional campuses often are. Whether those conditions generate the reports or merely explain their persistence is a question the available record cannot resolve.
Notable Entities
Cherry Creek High School is an active public school campus. The 1874 one-room schoolhouse — brought to campus in 1969 and restored as a museum classroom — is located on the grounds and not accessible to the public. The greenbelt area adjacent to campus, where the girl's apparition is reported walking, is the closest publicly accessible area.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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