The Highland Road schoolhouse was on my list of things to find in Washington State.

While pursuing my ghost-towning passion, I found the Ghost Towns of Washington on Facebook. The main website is a treasure trove of places Shep and I can go to find history and great photos.

It helped me find the abandoned schoolhouse in Govan.

And it’s where I first saw the Highland Road schoolhouse that stands on the corner of Highway 2 and the aptly named Highland School Road.

After one wrong turn on Wednesday, I struggled to remember if there was much left to see on the route eastward to Spokane.

The sun was setting and I was losing my light. But I didn’t miss the little building as I ascended the ridge of the Moses Coulee.

A Google search doesn’t come up with much on the one-room schoolhouse that’s said to have been built in 1905.

“The last classes were held here in 1949,” the Ghost Towns of Washington says. “The school was not part of any one township, but rather served several surrounding communities.”

It was a community hall and used as a voting precinct up until the 1960s.

Now it stands in a state of disrepair.

It has been ravaged by time, weather and vandals.

A thought crosses my mind: maybe the kids who went to school here and suffered days with grumpy headmistresses would appreciate graffiti’s defiance against authority.