Green Valley Schools

Fertile farmland and plentiful timber attracted settlers to this part of Denton County about 1870. The community that developed originally was called Toll Town because of two roads that intersected at this point. Schoolteacher Henry Clay Wilmoth suggested the name change to Green Valley. The post office opened in 1874, and there were several stores and a blacksmith shop in the community when the first recorded subscription school for Green Valley children began in a vacant farmhouse in 1878. Although the community lost a number of residents and businesses when the Texas and Pacific Railroad bypassed it in 1881, the Green Valley public school district was organized as District No. 20 in 1884. Local carpenters Sam Gross and James Mays built a one-room schoolhouse, in which Lutie Whayne was the first teacher. That building burned in 1894, and it was replaced that year at a site about one-half mile north of the first schoolhouse. Green Valley's third school, a new, four-room building, greeted students in 1919. In 1935 Green Valley School District offered only first through ninth grades, so students traveled to Denton to complete their education. By the time Green Valley School closed in 1949, with Florence Habern as the last teacher, it had provided fine academic and athletic opportunities for several generations of students in this rural area. The 1919 school building continues in use as a community center. (2001).