WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF HIGHLINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ARCHIVES

The Sunnydale School house in Burien is now 100 years old. The structure has been enlarged and turned 90 degrees to more easily accommodate growth. But in the interests of "origins," both these "now and then" views look at the original east face across what since 1921 has been known as Des Moines Memorial Drive.

	KEN M. BLAKESLEE, JR.

Generally, the earliest pioneers stayed close to the water, either the shores of Puget Sound or the rivers in the valley. When Mike Kelly left his home by the Duwamish River to explore the Highline ridge with his dog, he was delighted to find a stream-fed fertile valley near the top. He called it Sunnydale. And after he and his fiancee, Jane, married in 1872, they filed their claim there. They built the "Kelly Road" between their farm and the river, started a family and then a school in their log cabin. Jane was the teacher.

Other families soon joined the Kellys, and together in 1882 they built a one-room schoolhouse beside Miller Creek. In 1904 — hence the centennial — the parents of the students again took up their hammers and constructed the four-room structure printed here. It was put up about 100 yards to the west of the original school. Remarkably, this 1904 frame schoolhouse — with its high ceilings, moldings and wide hallways — survives within the envelope of the existing stucco school.

Of course, it has grown with Burien. When new, the school served 70 students; now, more than 500 in grades K through 6 use the landmark.

In 1929 the structure was pivoted 90 degrees to make a footprint more flexible for growth. And, as they say, the rest has been readin', writin', 'rithmetic and deportment. (I must thank my "teachers" Ken M. Blakeslee Jr. and Cyndi Upthegrove for help with this.)