Flat Rock High School

Flat Rock High School. In 1905. the Methodist Episcopal Church. South. authorized Dr. Frank Gardner and his wife, Annie, to begin Flat Rock School In 1911, Flat Rock High School formally opened. It was the only high school on Sand Mountain north of Albertville. The North Alabama Methodist Conference approved Dr. Gardner as the school superintendent and Robert H Hartford to be the first principal. The school's first graduation was held in 1912., In 1914 construction began on a two-story administrative building made of stone quarried from the property of Andrew Hogue. Completed at a cost of $12.000. the new building featured four recitation halls. a library, an office, and a large auditorium with opera-style seating. The auditorium hosted church services and school programs beginning in 1917., Back side: , Flat Rock High School offered a classical curriculum which included instruction in foreign languages, as well as a diverse agricultural course of study. At its height, the 292-acre school campus included two dormitories, a library, vocational building, grist mill, and a sawmill. A church historian called the school “one of Methodism's best.”, Other principals of the school were N. Homer Price (1913), Isaac Carlton (1915), Leon G. Alverson (1918-1921, 1926-1927), George W. Floyd (1921-1925), and William Marvin McDonald (1925- 1926). The last superintendent was Dr. Samuel L. Dobbs (1928-1929)., In the mid-1920s, the boys' dormitory burned. A few years later, in 1929, the girls' dormitory burned as well. After these setbacks, and diminished funding with the onset of the Great Depression, the school's board of trustees reluctantly closed the school in 1929 and sold it to the State of Alabama. The Jackson County Board of Education later reopened it as a junior high school serving nine grades., Erected during the bicentennial of Jackson County and the State of Alabama.