The Rhoads School is pictured Sept. 24 in Elk Grove Regional Park as workers got ready to clean it for a 50-year celebration Oct. 10. Photo by Keith Burbank

ELK GROVE, CA (MPG) - A historic school got a cleaning recently for a coming celebration Oct. 10.

The event will mark 50 years since the Rhoads School in Elk Grove Regional Park moved to the park from its original location on Sloughhouse Road.

“In 1976 for the bicentennial, they were encouraging communities to do historic restoration projects,” said Roberta Tanner, director of Rhoads School. “And so, a group of people got together and decided to restore the Rhoads Schoolhouse, which had been sitting vacant for about 25 years.”

Workers with No Moss Softwash clean the Rhoads School to get it ready for the Oct. 10 celebration. Photo courtesy of No Moss Softwash

The 50-year celebration starts at 10 a.m. and lasts until 4 p.m. at the school and will include free tours, food trucks, history displays, photo opportunities, wagon rides and special guests. The event is sponsored by the Elk Grove Historical Society.

The existing building is the second Rhoads School built in the region. The first was built in the 1850s close to the Cosumnes River and was subject to flooding. Children got sick from mosquito bites. The school closed in 1872.

A second school was built that year on Sloughhouse Road and closed in 1949, Tanner said. The Murphy family, who owned the property on which the schoolhouse was located, later donated the home.

“So, they went out and they jacked it up, put it on a big trailer,” Tanner said, “and trailered it to Elk Grove Park, where it is now.”

The schoolhouse and grounds were cleaned Sept. 24 by No Moss Softwash to get it ready for the Oct. 10 celebration.

Chris Lombardo and his crew applied a special No Moss Soss to clean the roof, for example.

“It’s a shake roof,” Lombardo told the Elk Grove Citizen. “You can’t pressure wash that.”

The company uses a process called softwashing, which involves cleaning with less than 40 pounds of pressure, Lombardo said.

“So, it kind of bubbles up and it cleans and disinfects the roof,” he added. “And then we rinse it.”

Community members came together in 1976 – long before this latest cleaning – to restore the school.

Christopher Lombardo washes the roof of the Rhoads School Sept. 24 to get it ready for a 50-year celebration Oct. 10. Photo courtesy of No Moss Softwash

“The community – mostly teenagers, high school and middle schoolers – spent the next year sanding it down and repainting it,” Tanner said.

The man in charge, Tanner said, “wanted everyone to use period-appropriate-only restoration methods, and so they just used a lot of elbow grease and a lot of sandpaper on blocks of wood and sanded it down and then repainted it.”

The school is named after John P. Rhoads, who traveled west from Illinois and arrived in California in 1846. Rhoads’ family traveled part of the way with the Donner Party but was about three weeks ahead of them when the Rhoads family passed through Salt Lake City.

The Donner Party that winter got stuck in the Sierra Nevada. Rhoads went on three rescue missions to deliver supplies and “bring survivors to safety,” according to the Elk Grove Historical Society.

A living history program now operates at the Rhoads School.

The program brings to life what it was like be a student and teacher at the school years ago, Tanner said.