District #7 (Inver Grove), 1854-1918

A Hastings Gazette clipping from April 27, 1872, relaying the burning of the District 7 schoolhouse, the first built by settlers in present-day Inver Grove Heights.

A photograph of the second District 7 schoolhouse, built along present-day River Road near 72nd Street. This schoolhouse was used from 1872-1882.

Commissioners of Dakota County met in July 1853 in Kaposia Village (present-day South St. Paul) to establish sites of one-room schoolhouses through the county. They chose what is today River Road, just south of the Rock Island Swing Bridge, for what would eventually become District #7, later the Inver Grove school.

That one-room schoolhouse served twenty pupils by fall 1854 and remained in use until April 1872, when it burned down. In its place, residents of the nearby settlement called Inver Grove built another one-room schoolhouse (pictured) at River Road and 72nd Street on the Manning farm.

With Inver Grove village continuing to grow along the railroad junction, the Manning Farm School was bursting at the seams with students by 1882. That year, with the help of the railroad company, residents built a grandiose two-story, four-classroom brick building on the site of the original District 7 school. It became not only a school for students from the village, but a community gathering place and the site of the 1909 vote to incorporate Inver Grove village. The two-story brick schoolhouse served the community until the end of World War I, when its proximity to the railroad tracks became a concern for the community, which began seeking other locations up the hill overlooking the village.

Sources: Lois Glewwe, History of Inver Grove Heights, 1854-1990; additional research by Cory Haala