It was a little school built of logs and mud, located on top of a remote place called Stackhouse Slough. It contained only six pupils.
The year was 1898 and this was the first school in the Flathead Valley region. The current Flathead High School is much bigger - but it's still too small for the students.
The first schoolhouse wasn't far from what would soon be considered Kalispell. Ten pupils from Flathead, Lake, Sanders, and Lincoln counties attended Ashley School, but it
only lasted for three months.
"Our school books were anything we could get our hands on," Eugene McCarthy, Jr., told one of the papers of the early 20th Century.
A trapper named H. A. "Hank" Robinson was the first school teacher in this school. He was a mysterious man who kept his background hidden, and when new villagers came to town, he drifted off and was never heard from again.
"Wherever he went or whatever became of him, I will always have a kindly remembrance of him, for it was he who instilled in me a desire for an education," said McCarthy.
At that time, teachers earned anywhere from $40 to $60 a month and principals were lucky if their monthly salary was $100.
Over the years, the population of students grew, as more people came to the Flathead Valley.
In 1967, the high school had approximately 2,300 students in a building constructed to hold 1,300. This problem was solved by making a two-shift day.
"It was really bad then," said fromer FHS principal Bill Vogt. "There wasn't a student handbook. If a student had two pages of unexcused absences, they were referred to the guidance office to see if they could be helped."
Students in the high school included freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. When the junior high was built in 1969, freshmen were moved there, and the shifts at the high school ended.
Within the last couple of years, FHS has experienced a rise in population. In 1994, there was a total of 1,609 students, and in 1995 this total rose to 1,623. Although these numbers are high, they're still not quite as high as the 1996-97 school year, which totals 1,844 students.
"It's the economy that causes all of this fluctuation," said Kay Epperly, the enrollment clerk for School District 5.
FHS's population continues to vary throughout the year, but the main source of these high numbers is the sophomore class, with a total of 671 students this year.
"I think we went through a period of time where there were a lot of people moving to Kalispell,"
said Vogt. "It's a good thing most of them were here to retire because if they would've been
school age, we would've been in trouble."