GCCS History

The Town of Guffey

The town of Guffey (originally called Freshwater) came into being in the late 1800s as hopeful miners who missed the claim rush in Cripple Creek moved hopefully west in search of gold and valuable minerals. They were largely disappointed, but minor mining operations kept the town alive and growing until just after the turn of the 20th century, by which time the town had hundreds of residents and dozens of businesses. Guffey lies in the mountains at the south end of Park County (famous... or infamous... as the setting of South Park).

The Earliest Days

The first school began operating in Guffey in 1895, which became a district school several years later. This was when many states, including Colorado, were passing compulsory education laws. Town leaders met in 1918, while World War I was still going on in Europe, to create a new school district and build a proper schoolhouse. The price of building materials was very high because of the war, so the initial building was left unfinished on the outside, and much of the construction material was salvaged by tearing down old buildings. The new school opened on September 28, 2018, with 25-30 students, but closed between October 11, 1918 and December 3, 1918 due to the great influenza pandemic. (Our recent students, who missed the third term of 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, were amazed to learn that they were not the first in our school to deal with such things!)

The first teachers, who were required to be unmarried women, were housed in a teacherage built across the street from the schoolhouse. This building, now a privately owned home, is still across the street from the school.

The Path to a Charter School

The school operated on and off over the next decades, depending upon the number of students and the whims of the school district, located an hour away in the county seat of Fairplay. (The little spruce planted out in front in this 1950 image is now a majestic giant.) Shortly after Colorado passed the Charter School Act, community members came together to create Guffey Community Charter School. In this way the school was afforded enough local control that it could be run with certainty from year to year without worrying that the district would close it and bus Guffey students an hour to Fairplay.