School buses and children in front of DuPont School. A school was originally built at this site in 1911, on property donated by the DuPont Co. It was increased in size in 1938 and 1941 and modernized. As schools were constructed at Fort Lewis, all elementary students from DuPont attended school on base and this building became the junior high, and then the high school. It was named Laughbon High after the school superintendent. The school closed in 1975. Weyerhaeuser bought the grounds and demolished the school. (A History of Pierce County, Vol. 1)
Schools--DuPont--1940-1950; Public schools--DuPont--1940-1950; School children--DuPont;
A new International Harvester bus is parked in front of the DuPont School in this photograph from March 1940. The original section of the DuPont School was built in 1917 by the DuPont Company and held four classrooms and an auditorium. In 1920, three more rooms and a furnace room were added. Known as the DuPont Junior High until 1960, it became both the junior high and Laughbon High School. It was closed as a pubic school in 1975. The bus body was built by the Gillig Brothers manufacturing company in Hayward, California.
Dupont School, Ft. Lewis Midget Team. The baseball team, the "Tigers," pose in uniform with their coach in the center of the back row. By 1975, DuPont students no longer attended high school in their own hometown. Ft. Lewis now sent all of its students to Clover Park. DuPont's school Laughbon High, a victim of boundary disputes with Clover Park school district and declining enrollment, closed on June 11, 1975. Weyerhauser bought the land and demolished the buildings.
School children--Dupont; Dupont School (Dupont); Baseball--Dupont; Baseball players--Dupont;
