TREVORTON - One of the original Trevorton school buildings was destroyed in a fire in 1979.
The main portion of the current building was built more than 160 years ago.
The 2012-13 elementary school yearbook features these and other facts in a brief history of Trevorton Elementary School. A new chapter begins this school year when the Trevorton building becomes Line Mountain Elementary School, home to all of the district's students in grades kindergarten through four.
The yearbook also includes histories on Dalmatia and Leck Kill elementaries, which were shuttered at the close of the 2012-13 school year as part of an elementary consolidation.
There were four school buildings to educate students in elementary through high school built between 1850 and 1872, the first on a Shamokin Street (Route 225) lot between Eighth and Ninth streets. In 1872, a two-story, four-classroom building was erected along Market Street. It was remodeled in 1912, and it was destroyed by fire in 1979.
In 1903, the current building was erected on Shamokin Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. Several enhancements have since been added, including the auditorium/gymnasium wing in 1930.
In 1966, Mahanoy Joint and Trevorton districts merged to form Line Mountain as part of the Pennsylvania School District Reorganization Act of 1963, a mandated initiative to combine smaller school districts into larger ones in the interest of cost efficiency and better educational opportunities.
At the time, Trevorton High School was converted to a middle school and the former Mahanoy Joint High School became Line Mountain High School.
Trevorton was one of four elementary schools in the district at the time, along with West Cameron, Leck Kill and Dalmatia. West Cameron closed in 2001.
The building between Fifth and Sixth streets continued to be used as Trevorton Elementary and Line Mountain Middle School until 2003, when it became an elementary only, hosting students from kindergarten through sixth grade.
In 2007, with community opposition to a proposed elementary consolidation, the school board voted to keep the three elementary schools open and renovate each building. But in 2009, fifth- and sixth-grade students from the entire district began attending Trevorton, using the second floor, while the bottom floors housed kindergarten through fourth grades.
It cost $9.6 million to renovate the high school in Mandata and add a seventh- and eighth-grade wing in 2009, $7.4 million to renovate Trevorton Elementary School in 2009 and $1.1 million to renovate Leck Kill Elementary School in 2010.
However, when it came to Dalmatia, the cost to renovate - $6.3 million - was only $1.7 million less than building new.
That realization and other rising costs pushed the district to once again consider consolidation. The board voted last year to close Dalmatia and Leck Kill elementaries at the end of the 2012-13 school year, and send those students to Trevorton.
With that, students in kindergarten through fourth grade from every area of the district will attend the newly named Line Mountain Elementary in Trevorton for the first time when school opens Wednesday. Fifth- and sixth-graders will join seventh- and eighth-graders in a new middle school wing at the Mandata campus.