Coleta High School “Comets”

Coleta, Illinois (population 100) is located 10 miles northwest of Sterling, as the crow flies, at the intersection of Pilgrim and Coleta roads in northern Whiteside County in northern Illinois. It is about five miles south of Milledgeville as well.

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The village was established in 1840, and small frame school houses in town provided education to its youth for the next 120 years. In the early 1920s, the village had about the same population as it does today (2025), but traveling from town to town wasn’t as simple as it is today. It was also around this time that high school was becoming a more important part of students’ education, so educators at the Coleta School came up with a high school curriculum to keep its older students close to home, saving them from having to travel to Sterling or Milledgeville to continue their education. It didn’t last long, though. The high school curriculum began in 1920 for grades 9 through 11, and Coleta’s last high school class dismissed only four years later, in 1924. Those wishing to attend 12th grade had to do so elsewhere.

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Coleta’s school building at the time of its high school years was built in 1875 at the edge of town on South Main Street, with a wing added in 1885. Up until the 1910s, students were required to attend school until age 14. When that age was raised to 16, many schools in villages like Coleta didn’t have the instructors qualified to teach them, so older students had to travel to out of town to get a high school education. Coleta High School’s first class consisted of 15 students under teacher C.L. Hurless. The new classes were taught in the cloak room, but it didn’t take long before Hurless saw that more space was needed. That was made possible the following year.

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Cyrus Bushman, who was the Genesee Township assessor at the time, rented out his home north of the school for high school classes. Despite the larger space — and whatever expansions to it that Bushman (a carpenter by trade) could create — more space was needed, likely a whole new building, one that taxpayers would have to foot the bill to build. But higher taxes for higher education weren’t something they were prepared to go along with, and proposals were shot down at the ballot box in 1922 and 1924. With the Bushman home becoming too cramped, the decision was made by the school to discontinue high school classes. Coleta High School, while small, had school activities and sports teams. Its Mandolin Club often performed at local functions. The school’s basketball team rounded up enough students to play a game or two against older students of nearby elementary schools; the games against Central School in Sterling were their biggest of note.

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Hurless left the school before its final class, replaced by brother and sister Victor and Myrtle Jacobson. Myrtle later married Cyrus’ son Rothmer, and continued a career in teaching until the 1950s, becoming one of the first teachers at Sterling’s Washington Elementary School. Coleta never revisited the possibility of hosting high school education. The 1875 school building was razed in 1956, and a larger consolidated school was built on its site; that school was absorbed into the Sterling School District in 1972 and closed for good in 1979. The Bushman home that housed high school classes is now a private residence. The consolidated school building now houses a business.

 

 

Year high school program began: 1920

Year high school program ceased: 1924

Building Status: Razed in 1956

Year K-8 program ceased: 1979

School Colors: Green & White (Consolidated

grade school years)

School Mascot: “Comets” (Consolidated

grade school years)

School Song: Unknown

 

We are hopeful someone will fill in the open areas regarding the history and accomplishments of the Coleta school throughout its entire history, including the “high school era.” If you have any information you can offer, please drop us an email at ihsgdwebsite@comcast.net.

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