The Dexter Library gets refreshed

The last time we drove into Dexter (population 631) from White Pole Road, we were met by this beautiful stucco building. How refreshing!

This is how the building looked most recently, although the building next to it has been torn down.

It began as a two-story building, with a doorway where the beautiful corner window is today. in 1938 it became a WPA job, to have the top floor removed and the materials used to create a town library and community hall below.

My grandparents, Clabe and Leora Wilson, raised their family in Dexter in poverty during the Great Depression. Clabe worked part time WPA jobs when he was chosen. The library job was his last one, when he was hired to run a farm near Minburn.

This was the local library when I was growing up. The bench in front of the library remembers the five Wilson brothers, my uncles, who grew up in Dexter during the Great Depression and who served in WWII. (Their sisters were Darlene Scar and my mother, Doris Neal.)

More history of the Dexter Library, with photos of the original building and clippings about the WPA remodel.