08/27/2026
THROWBACK THURSDAY | RIDING THE SCHOOL VAN
As school gets set to start here shortly, our next two weeks of posts will be looking at early education in High Prairie.
Long before the familiar yellow school bus travelled the roads around High Prairie, students were getting to school by a very different kind of bus: the horse-drawn school van.
When settlers began arriving in increasing numbers during the early 1900s, families were spread across a large rural area surrounding High Prairie. As the number of school-aged children grew, the little local school became overcrowded. Distance was also a problem. For children living on homesteads several miles away, simply getting to school each day could place a considerable burden on families.
In 1917, local residents considered two solutions: establish more one-room schools throughout the countryside, or consolidate students at a central school and provide transportation. After initially voting against the idea, the community accepted consolidation, and Prairie River Consolidated School No. 36 opened in January 1918.
That decision created another challenge: how do you get rural students to a central school in an era before school buses?
The answer was the horse-drawn school van.
Routes were established north, south and west of High Prairie. The photograph in the in this post shows Jack Napier’s van, which is recorded as transporting students from five miles west of town to High Prairie. Other routes were established for north and south. Can you imagine that ride into town each day for school in the dead set of winter?
These enclosed vans became a familiar part of school life around High Prairie. Pulled by teams of horses, they carried children from surrounding farms into the consolidated school and made centralized education possible in a large and sparsely settled district.
The horse-drawn van system lasted for over 25 years.
By the 1940s, motorized school buses were beginning to replace the horse-drawn vans. A photograph from 1946 shows Bill Kuchuk with his first school bus, marking the beginning of a very different era in getting local children to school. As transportation improved, the school system itself continued to consolidate, with older rural schools initially retaining Grades 1–6 while older students were bused into High Prairie.
By 1964, a photograph of dismissal outside Prairie River School shows a lineup of motorized school buses — a remarkable contrast to the horse teams and wooden vans that had helped make consolidated schooling possible over 40 years earlier.
From horsepower to horsepower, getting kids to school has always been part of the High Prairie story.
