Teien school, township building now placed on National Historic Register

By Anna Jauhola
Over the last five years, students of Teien Central School have worked with a wayward volunteer to save the building they loved in their elementary years.
The Teien Central School and Town Hall is a well-known landmark in Teien Township on what many call the River Road – County Road 7 that parallels the Red River of the North in southwestern Kittson County. This building was in danger of being razed not long ago when the township board met to announce the township didn’t have the funds to maintain it anymore.
“The community said no, and is there a way we can preserve this?” said Laura Bloomquist Hammond, who spearheaded the venture to place the building on the National Historic Register.
This one sentence spurred a five-year adventure to gain that national status, which was granted on Dec. 18.
“I thought, ‘I’m not going to say anything to Lorna until she’s sitting down because she’d fall down!” said Marlys Nelson.
Nelson and Lorna Anderson were both students at Teien Central School in the 1940s. Anderson started school there in 1941 and Nelson started in 1944. Nelson still lives right across the gravel road to the north of the school house. Growing up, she said teachers for the school boarded with her parents, so she got to play school before she even attended Teien.
Anderson still lives in Drayton, and remembers collecting scrap and everything else that went with the World War II years. Hammond herself missed attending Teien Central School by one year – she began kindergarten the year the school closed – but she was at the building often for 4-H.
“We were at the senior center (in Drayton) eating and I went over to her, right Lorna?” Nelson said to Anderson. “And I said, ‘I got news for you. It starts out, Congratulations.’”
These two women were the first Hammond told about the Teien building being placed on the National Historic Register. But why fight for an old building to be restored?
Hammond emphasized the building’s importance, pointing to her many writings for grants which included the building’s relevance in education, to township government and community service. In its heyday, the Teien Central School served upward of 80 students at one time – that’s huge for a rural school. That was the reason the district built a two-story school house, which was uncommon, Hammond said.

To read the full story, see the Jan. 14, 2026 edition of the Kittson County Enterprise