1930
The Mountain School
The best understanding of historians is that the story originated weeks earlier when Admiral Joel T. Boone, Hoover's physician, was exploring trails in the surrounding mountains and came upon an eleven-year-old boy named Ray Burraker. Boone learned that Burraker and his eight brothers and sisters had never attended school. The area in which they lived, known as Dark Hollow, had no school. The President raised money to build a small schoolhouse that included an apartment for Christine Vest, the teacher they hired. Vest had been trained in the special needs of education in remote mountain communities. The first year's class of twenty-two students ranged from 6 to 20 years of age.