Loma Elementary School, Loma, Colorado 1910 1284 US 6 Business Loop Loma Mesa Colorado USA Loma's second schoolhouse, built of brick in 1910 by Frank Knowles and his son George Knowles. It was administered by Loma School District 23, which formed in 1895. According to oral history interviewee Hazel (Durham) Murphy, who sent her children to the school and taught there as well, the school employed about seven teachers and taught grades 1-10 during the 1920’s. Its student body came from Loma and, for a time, from Mack. According to George Cecil Harper, who attended the school as a child, the school was also built with stone quarried from Horsethief Canyon. Around 1921, teacher Gertrude Rader, and Lela and George Vanlandingham organized the county’s first hot lunch program at the school. Teachers were given food from Herron’s Store. They cooked soup at home and then brought it into school still hot. They kept the food warm in a kerosene oven, using an unused coal room in the northwest part of the school as a kitchen. The PTA, of which Wiswell was the president, cleaned the room and sponsored the service (Leola Wiswell also speaks about the hot lunch service in her interview). Older girls took turns dishing food from a tin cup into the other children’s bowls. The children were not charged for the food, although parents provided vegetables, pork and beans. The hot food service later moved to the Loma Community Hall. place:1559 Loma, Colorado yes yes