By Mark Kneubuhl
Special to LIVE!
November 7, 2007

Like thousands of small towns across America, the history of Eola, just over 20 miles east of San Angelo, has already been written. But an energetic entrepreneur may put the one stop sign town back on the map with a quaint idea of a brewery and dancehall for Eola’s old schoolhouse.

Eola, formally known as Jordan, changed its name in 1902 when the first store was built and the town only had four families. Eola was created during a land boom when county school lands were put up for sale at fifty cents per acre in the 1890s.

A two-story schoolhouse was built in 1906 by a mainly Czech population of 25. By 1930, the population had grown ten-fold, forcing residents to build a bigger school to house the towns elementary and high school students.

For the next fifty years, the five-acre plot with a 20,000 square foot school building was the fulcrum of the town, with thousands of young students having walked the halls.

In 1947, the town had reached its zenith when 350 Eolans called the town home. Nine full-time teachers taught in the school, which had its own band and football team.

Around that time, Roy Rogers preformed live at the school for the students. And in 1952, the Eola High School 6-man football team squared off to play Christoval for the regional championship.

This was Eola’s heyday, but like so many other small American towns, it was also the beginning of the end. Growth did not happen, instead a small but steady decline occurred. Then finally, in 1982, the Eola School graduated its last class of students.

Since then, the students of Eola (population about 240) were bussed to surrounding schools, while the building itself sat empty, exposed to weather and the victim of vandals for over two decades.

Then in 2003, the old, run down school became the instant benefactor as a result of one Oregon resident’s homesickness. “I wanted to get closer to my family,” said Mark Cannon, who was born in a small town outside of Texarkana and had been working in Portland, Oregon for the past several years.

“I was working seven-days a week in sales and I never could break away so I decided to come home and buy a fixer-upper,” said Cannon.

And a fixer-upper it was. Most every window was broken, every door torn off its hinges, and the wiring and fixtures were ripped right out of the brick walls.

“I originally envisioned contractors doing all the work. I didn’t know anything about building… or restaurants and making beer, for that matter. My idea was to get the building in good shape and lease out different areas of the school for various businesses,” said Cannon.

Cannon’s idea was not unfounded. Before coming to Eola, he had an Oregon restaurateur who had “one foot on the bus,” ready to come to Eola and open up shop. “But things just didn’t happen. All of a sudden the sale came together, I came here and he went somewhere else,” said Cannon.

Today (probably because the bulk of the work is behind him), Mark Cannon talks about his four-year, uphill battle, with fondness.

“I was presented some unexpected challenges, especially when I set up the restaurant and I didn’t know anything about restaurants,” he said.

But that’s not to say that there’s not a whole lot of work left. Today the auditorium is functional but the stage has yet to be rebuilt from a fire several years back and two-and-a-half decades of weather and neglect.

While Cannon has been working on the building, many residents and alumni have offered stories and mementoes of the school’s good ol’ days.

Wanda Hensley, for one, remembers their class play in the 1930s when Ernest Tubb played during the intermission.

“Wanda had a guitar but she didn’t know how to play it, so after the play Ernest taught her a few cords,” said Cannon.

Cannon conducted around eight months of research on the building. “I was looking at microfilm from the Standard-Times until my eyes couldn’t focus,” he said.

Today, Mark Cannon and the Eola school building reinforce two very old American adages: “Good things take time’” and “Hard work pays off.”

With four years gone by and buckets of sweat wiped from his brow, Cannon now has the infrastructure of the school in good shape, a restaurant, a bunkhouse and a brewery with 500 one-gallon jugs in circulation.

“I was never a brewer but living in a city (Portland) that has the highest per capita of craft breweries than anywhere, I was aware of the craft, but never worked in that business,” Cannon said.

Since starting his mini-brewery just 18 months ago with a 60-gallon capacity, Bright Brewing has been written up twice in the Southwest Brewer News.

Since then, Cannon has been forced by demand to upgrade equipment to handle a 250-gallon capacity. Now Bright brews a light beer, a dark beer, and a specialty brew called Warlock Wheat, sure to be a holiday favorite.

Besides the brewery, the school is becoming popular for hosting events like chili cook-offs, music concerts, birthdays, and reunions. Last month they hosted a Halloween costume contest with live music, prizes and of course, some Warlock Wheat for the elders.

Thanks to the vision of one homesick cowboy, the historic Eola Schoolhouse is once again hearing laughter in its halls and bringing a little pride to a small town that refuses to go silently into a good night.

Finally, curiosity got the best of me as I shamelessly asked Cannon what he had paid for the place.  After a short pause, he just smiled and said, “It’s not about what it costs, it’s all about what I’ve put into it.”

For more information you can go to the website at eolaschool.com or call (325) 469-3314.