The Summit Historical Society is working to get two historic structures in Summit County added to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties.

Summit Historical Society director Jordan Bennett said the 1883 Dillon Schoolhouse, which currently serves as the Historical Society’s museum and interpretation site, and the Rice Family Barn in Summit Cove could soon be added to the state historic register.

“Coming from a museum and anthropology background myself, I knew there was a state register, but it wasn’t something we were looking at until we were looking at ‘how do we keep these buildings preserved long-term?'” Bennett said. “Sometimes to do that you need money.”

The Colorado State Register of Historic Properties is a list of the significant cultural resources that are worthy of preservation for the future education and enjoyment of the state’s residents and visitors, according to History Colorado.

Listing on the state historical register is a formal recognition of a property’s importance to the history of Colorado. Being listed also brings benefits, including eligibility to compete for grants from Colorado’s State Historical Fund and eligibility to apply for state tax credits for restoration, rehabilitation or preservation.

Summit County already has several properties listed on the state historical register, including the Boreas Railroad Station, the Breckenridge Historic District, the Frisco School house (now the town’s visitor center), the Montezuma Schoolhouse, the Soda Creek Homestead and Wildhack’s Grocery Store and post office (now Foote’s Rest in Frisco).

To be added to the state historical register, properties go through a multi-step application process to prove that they have historical significance and meet certain criteria. Bennett said that History Colorado provided feedback after the Summit Historical Society submitted first-round applications for the Dillon Schoolhouse and Rice Family Barn. 

As part of the application process, both the Dillon Town Council and the Summit Board of County Commissioners signed intergovernmental agreements recognizing the historic significance of the two structures, Bennett said.

“It promotes local history,” Bennett said of the state register designation. “We’re just really excited about that because we want to be known as an institution that provides history opportunities for the entire community.”

1883 Dillon Schoolhouse

The Dillon Schoolhouse, which was constructed in 1883 in the old town of Dillon, is a historic schoolhouse with traditional clapboard siding, wood-framed windows and solid wood doors, according to the application Summit Historical Society submitted to History Colorado.

The first Dillon school session to be held started in 1884, when Dillon was still located at the center of Summit County, where the Dillon Reservoir is now, and provided mercantile services to the surrounding mining towns, the application states. Of the 12 original one-room schoolhouses in the county, it is only one of three that remain.

The Dillon Schoolhouse currently serves as the Summit Historical Society museum and interpretive site. The Dillon Schoolhouse is complete with historic desks, which Bennett said can’t be verified as originally belonging to the school, but are from the right time period. 

When the Summit Historical Society leads interpretive classes there, older students often take younger students under their wing, as they would have historically in the one-room schoolhouse, where multiple ages learned alongside each other, she said.

“It’s definitely reminiscent of what it would have been like,” Bennett said. “It’s really nice to see. You can just see people’s eyes light up when they see something they’d thought they’d never see again.”

Rice Family Barn

The Rice Family Barn is a two-story barn that was constructed between 1917 and 1919 by Benjamin Franklin Rice and his three sons Norman, Earl and Ben Jr, according to the application to History Colorado. During his life, Benjamin Rice served as a county commissioner.

The barn — which was used to house draft horses, hay and equipment to help the town of Dillon — is the best preserved example of a ranching homestead in Summit County that is open to the public, the application states. It represents a key chapter in the county’s history, between the mining boom of the late-19th century, and the beginnings of modern Summit County in the mid-20th century.

“When you walk into the Rice Barn, even today, you can still smell the hay and the horse,” Bennett said. “You know there were things going on in this structure. You’re like ‘Wow, this was used as something for years.'”

Homesteading in Summit County grew in the late-19th century as the mining boom began to decline. The Rice’s draft horses housed at the barn were invaluable for their labor in the High Country, the application states. At one point, the horses were reportedly photographed towing stuck automobiles through heavy snowdrifts.

Located at 357 Cove Boulevard, the Rice Barn remains in its original location. As the ski and tourism industries took off in the late-20th century, the Summit Cove neighborhood popped up around the historic barn, further reflecting the region’s transition in the late 1950s and early 1960s.