Motorists on Highway 169 south of Bouton may have noticed something missing on their commute since Sunday, as a well-known eyesore is no longer standing.

The Gardiner Consolidated School Building, located just south of the Highway 141 intersection, was reduced to rubble over the weekend, ending its 100 year history. The building has stood vacant and neglected for the better part of 50 years, impeding farming operations in the area while also creating safety and security concerns. The property under the decrepit building has been owned by Bouton resident Karl Harris for the last several years, and he has farmed around it during that time. This year, however, Harris finally tired of chasing trespassers away from the former school and wanted to put the land into production.

He used his experience and knowledge as the Bouton Fire Captain to take down the structure, burning the trees around it and weakening the masonry to the point it was able to crumble in on itself. It took two controlled burns to bring down the building, with the first held on Christmas Eve and the second on January 5th. With the demolition completed, Harris will now shift his focus to properly cleaning up the debris and making the land farmable, which he hopes to accomplish by this spring. The Gardiner School was erected in 1919, and has been unoccupied since 1964.