History of Our School

  • Irmo, located between the Broad and Saluda Rivers was settled in the late 1700's by the Germans. They were an industrious, self-reliant group of settlers who tilled the rocky, red hills of the area which was soon called the Dutch Fork. The "Dutch" did not refer to the Netherlands, but was an English pronunciation of their German language "Deutsch". As the rivers flowed together to form the Congaree River at Columbia the river appeared to fork, hence the Dutch Fork. The group was rather closed and isolated and retained their German culture for a comparatively long period.

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    Life in the Dutch Fork was hard and the people were very poor. This area was devastated during the Civil War by General Sherman's troops. Shortly after the Civil War, a one-room school was built at the site of the present Irmo Insurance Agency, adjacent to Irmo Elementary property.

    When the railroad came in the 1880's a water stop was needed between Columbia and the next town on the line. Using the first two letters of the names of railroad officials, C. J. Iredell and H. C. Moseley, Irmo was incorporated in 1891 as a railroad town.

     

  • The History of Irmo Elementary School dates back to 1935 when our building was constructed to serve all grades one through eleven. This was one of the first projects in our area to be built with federal funds appropriated for public works projects. This was part of Roosevelt's New Deal to bring America out of the depression and provide long term benefits to the citizens. In addition to the actual construction of the building and its long service to the community, unemployed workers spent years grading and building the athletic field by hand with shovels and wheel barrows. There was great community pride in the building. The construction of this building was quite an event for Irmo. There was an auditorium, a gym, spacious classrooms and the athletic field. It was the first centrally heated building in Irmo with steam heat. Through the years the school has changed from a K-12 school to a K-5 school. The original building still exists today but additions and an extreme makeover has changed the school students entered almost 70 years ago.