School’s out forever: Grand Junction High School set to graduate last class from its 1956 building
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Seniors at Grand Junction High School will be the last class to ever graduate from the old building next month.
Built in 1956, the 68-year-old school has serious foundation and structural issues that are impossible to repair. The school was founded in 1891 and moved once after the turn of the century before settling into the flat roofed, brick building with long hallways at 1400 N 5th Street.
In 2021, Mesa County voters approved a $115 million bond measure to replace the high school.
That taxpayer money, plus $29.5 million in grants and other funds add up to $144.5 million for the new school facility. Construction started in 2022 and will finish by the fall for the 2024 school year.
The GJHS student council wanted to create space to remember the old building before it is demolished over the summer.
“We decided to come up with an idea that would benefit the community in a way where we could say goodbye to this old school and kind of keep the history behind it,” said Anara Munkhtogoo, a junior and student council member.
Students gave “farewell tours” of the old building and heard from former principals of the school at the event in early April. Current and former students paged through old yearbooks in the gym and remembered the building falling apart around them.
Old yearbooks for people to look at in the GJHS gym.
Photo: Joshua Vorse, Rocky Mountain PBS
“I play volleyball, we would have pieces of the ceiling just fall during our games. So that was kind of a big part of the school. And we just had to continue playing,” said Munkhtogoo.
Each classroom had its own character. That means they all had different problems, said Steve Brown, who has been teaching at GJHS for 24 years.
“The 300 building [part of the school], I had to run the water in the faucet for five seconds before I'd take any water out of it, because you had to let out all the rust, all the corrosion through the pipes,” Brown said.
The student newspaper, The Orange and Black, often reported on issues such as asbestos and the lack of heating or cooling in some classrooms. The student journalists won a national student journalism award for a special report on the poor conditions throughout the school.
1950's blueprints of the GJHS building on display in a classroom during the farewell tour.
Photo: Joshua Vorse, Rocky Mountain PBS
The state of the building made an impression. Munkhtogoo says the disrepair will be a big part of her memory of the school.
Staff and students are looking forward to moving into the new school, which was built right next to the old building, but don’t want to leave everything behind. A plaza and walkway at the new building will feature old bricks and tiles from the gym that’s being torn down this summer.
“It was super cool to hear that we would be part of the first graduating class [in the new building],” said Munkhtogoo of the bond measure passing in 2021.
Expanded sports facilities are a highlight of the new school for her.
“We're just all excited for what it has to offer. Me personally, having the sports there and having new facilities around the school, it will definitely benefit the community in many ways,” Munkhtogoo said.
The new school, which will keep the name Grand Junction High School, will be 250,000 square-feet, have capacity for 1,600 students and boast a 1,500-seat auditorium, according to School District 51.
An aerial view of the original GJHS building, and the lot in which the new building will be located.
Photo: Joshua Vorse, Rocky Mountain PBS
In the 2022-23 school year, there were 1,522 students enrolled, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
At the farewell tour, Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout read a proclamation from City Council declaring April 6 as “GJHS Tiger Pride Day.” Stout was one of the many GJHS alumni at the event.
In 1904, the football team came up with the tiger as the mascot and the school colors, orange and black, according to former principal Jon Bilbo.
“In my research I could not figure out how the heck they did that. There's no mention why they came up with tigers, and the colors before that were entirely different,” said Bilbo at the event.
New or old building, it will still be a special place to teach for Brown. Some teachers just want to get through the day, but he says students and staff at GJHS strive to live up to the school motto, “a tradition of excellence.”
“I think here there's just a different ethos amongst the teachers now, [they say] ‘I want that student to move into the house next to me, and I'd be happy that they're my neighbor,’” he said.
Joshua Vorse is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. joshuavorse@rmpbs.org