Four-year-old Lisette Heidenthal of Wilbur tries on a necklace she’s found at the Hartline Second Hand Mall, with a little help from her mom Kristen Heidenthal. Kristen has a background in museums and historic preservation, she said, so she’s always wanted to visit the Hartline school, and hearing of a chess set for sale there gave her the opportunity.
September 14, 2024
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Hidden treasure
Second-hand mall gives old Hartline School new life
HARTLINE — Just off Highway 2 about 13 miles northeast of Coulee City is the biggest little shop you may never have heard of. “I started out with (one) room, and somehow, someway, this thing just morphed into this,” said Cindy Cauble. “The whole entire school is a second-hand (store).” That school is the Hartline School, which was built in 1920 and first served the Hartline School District as a K-12 school and later, after consolidation, became part of the Coulee-Hartline School District. The 29,000-square-foot building has two stories, plus a gym in the basement, 12 classrooms and a 300-seat auditorium, according to the Hartline School Preservation Association, which now owns the building. In 2008, the Coulee-Hartline School District decided to vacate the building and bus Hartline’s students to Coulee City.