Niwot School classmates gather

Three classmates who attended the Niwot School, which included grades 1-8, located where the Diagonal Highway now runs, met at the Left Hand Grange No.9 in Niwot on May 31. The gathering was coordinated by the Niwot Historical Society with photos and images collected to be added to the Niwot historical records.

John Montoya, who lives in Wheat Ridge, planned a stop in Niwot during a road trip to visit the Niwot Cemetery and the area where he grew up, and was excited to arrange a visit with two of his Niwot classmates who still live in the area, JoAnn (Sampson) Bell of Longmont, and Nancy (Dodd) Hindman who lives west of Niwot.

Montoya's grandfather was Juan Apodoca, the Niwot Section House foreman who was transferred to Niwot from Trinidad, Colorado, by the Colorado Southern Railroad in 1926. Juan and Amelia Apodaca, along with their children, lived in the Section House along the tracks which was provided by the railroad.

Montoya recalled that two of his sisters, Delia (Montoya) Hammonds and Dora (Montoya) Mares graduated a few years before the three classmates. "Dora and Delia were about a year apart in age, but they were in the same grade level," he said.

The three classmates shared memories of the school and growing up in Niwot. Montoya said that whenever someone had an orange in their lunchbox, there would be a scramble to get the orange peel because the boys would strap the rind to their shoes and try to climb up the inside of the two-story fire escape at the school, and then slide back down.

He recalled some of the hard labor on farms, explaining that for one task, they crawled on hands and knees to thin the rows and rows of beets so the plants were at optimal growing distance apart. They used a special hook-bladed tool to thin the rows of beets. The Montoya children also had chores at area farms and the young boys enjoyed jumping on the piles of hay.

The Niwot School, built in 1910, was a two-story brick school, but was razed in 1972 to make room for the Longmont-to-Boulder lanes of the Diagonal Highway, which was originally only two lanes, with single-lane traffic in both directions.