Charles Fuqua regarded Eaton High School's recently restored historic windows with interest.  One in particular captured his attention.  Pointing to a second-story opening on the 1928 building's north side, he said, "I remember one time when the math teacher looked out that window and caught me and my buddies ditching study hall." Last year, the Eaton RE-2 School District repaired and restored the building's historic windows and other character-defining features as the final phase of a multi-year project supported by the Colorado Historical Society and the State Historical Fund.  But the project did more than fix window frames and terra-cotta embellishments.  It preserved a significant part of Eaton's history.

In many ways, Charles Fuqua and his family symbolize Eaton's past.  The story began in 1878, when Benjamin H. Eaton stood somewhere near Fort Collins and looked east.  He speculated that one day, with a little luck and a lot of irrigation, northeastern Colorado's barren plains might produce abundant crops of wheat, alfalfa, and corn.  In time, farmhouses, businesses, churches, and schools might also rise from the prairie sod.  He envisioned a fifty-mile irrigation system that would siphon water from the Cache la Poudre River and deliver it to 50,000 acres of land.  The folks in Greeley, who were struggling to make good on their own agrarian ambitions, announced through their newspaper that his project "will be more extensive than anything in Colorado, or perhaps in the entire country."

Within the year, Eaton worked out a plan to realize his vision.  After obtaining financing through a British investment firm known as the Colorado Mortgage and Investment Company, he constructed a ditch from the mouth of the Poudre Canyon to a point several miles north of Greeley.  Eventually, farmers bought irrigated land and grew wheat, alfalfa, and corn, just as Eaton had hoped.  And in 1882 they established a town beside the Denver & Pacific Railway tracks-named for Eaton (originally called Eatonton)-where they built homes, businesses, and schools.

School construction and attendance reflected the town's success and growth over subsequent years.  In 1902 civic leaders arranged for the construction of a sugar beet factory.  Farmers responded by producing the new cash crop by the ton.  Immigrant laborers, who harvested the beets, poured onto the fields almost as fast as the water.  Among the new arrivals were Fuqua's grandparents, Konrad and Anna Ginther.

The Ginthers, like most of the laborers, were Germans from Russia.  Catherine II, Russia's empress from 1762 to 1796, invited thousands of German-speaking people to settle and develop Russia's lower Volga River region during her reign.  The Germans enjoyed special privileges for decades, including exemption from military service.  However, after those privileges were revoked by later regimes, many Germans left Russia for the United States.  Some found work in the beet fields of eastern Colorado in the early 1900s.  Fuqua's mother, Leah Ginther, remembered harvesting beets alongside her parents when she was still a child.

Within months of the factory's opening day, Eaton's population doubled and classrooms overflowed.  Responding to the crisis, Eaton built a high school in 1909.  They named it after the town father whose success propelled him to the highest elected office in Colorado.  By the 1920s the town's continued growth filled the high school past its capacity.  Teachers held classes in hallways, in the basement, and even on a stairwell landing.  Once again, population growth compelled the town to build a new high school.  Designed by master architect Robert K. Fuller in 1928, the Collegiate Gothic Style building has continuously met the educational needs of the community's high school students to the present day.

Despite his one absence from study hall, Charles Fuqua graduated from Eaton High School in 1971.  Like many young men from the area, he found a job at the sugar factory bagging and stacking hundred-pound sacks of sugar.  He also operated the factory's machinery, including a "diffuser panel" (which controlled beet slicing) and the sugar-boilers.  When the plant shut down in 1976, Charles Fuqua became one of the last contributors to Eaton's sugar beet legacy.  Perhaps it was appropriate: his grandparents were among the first.

The high school's repair and restoration could lead to other preservation projects in Eaton.  Like most other small rural communities, Eaton lacks a local historic preservation ordinance or preservation planning and designation process.  The Eaton RE-2 School District, by successfully completing this large-scale $300,000 project, has shown that sensitive restoration can be a cost-effective way to ensure the continued functionality of older buildings.  As others follow the district's lead, the full spectrum of Eaton's heritage-from Eaton's ditch to portions of the sugar factory itself-might be interpreted and preserved.