The community between the Little Missouri River and the Big Bend of the Belle Fourche River (approximately 7 miles southeast of Alzada, Montana) didn`t have a school for their children. The patrons of the school district met with their school board to discuss the problem. Their district , District No. 29, needed a school badly. Someone asked about the school on Charlie Branum`s place. It hadn`t been used for years. They thought the school belonged to District No. 2, so the two school boards met and tried to find a solution to the problem. District No. 2 said that they could have the school if they could get it away from Mr. Branum without causing any trouble. Mr. Branum wouldn`t grant anyone access to the school after he filed on the land, so it set there from 1917 until 1922. Mr. Branum was holding the school on the grounds of a clause in the Homestead Act. The clause stated that any buildings or improvements that had been built prior to the Homestead Act were to go to the landowner. The patrons of District No. 29 decided that they had to try and get that school, because they couldn`t think of any other solution. They had to have a place for their children to learn.
One night six wagons and seven or eight men went to Branum`s. They had skid logs all cut and ready to go. They got to Bull Creek before it got dark and decided that the only was to get the school was in the dark because it was near Mr. Branum`s store and the post office, and he might see them. After dark they went past the store on the country road. Mr. Branum heard the wagons going by and thought that they were Indians going from the Montana reservations to the Dakota reservations. After Mr. Branum turned his lights out, they lit up their lanterns and jacked the school up. They put the skids under it and loaded it on two wagons. There were two four-horse teams. They put a jockey stick between the wagon tongues so they wouldn`t spread out, and chained the school to the skids on their bolster and wagons so everything was secure.
The next morning they pulled it onto the country road so they wouldn`t get caught on Branum`s property. Mr. Branum saw them as they passed his store. All he could do was shake his fist at them.
They placed the school on the drainage of Hoffman Creek and Antelope Gulch that runs into the Little Missouri River. It was called Antelope Gulch School. It was placed there in 1922 and Mary Alice Sheldon was the first teacher. It was recently sold to the Silver Spur 4-H Club for one dollar.
This story was taken from an interview with Clyde Raber.