A Candlelight visitor favorite is the Bairfield Schoolhouse, brought to holiday life through the soft illumination of lanterns and the hushed giggling of children dressed in their frontier finest. 

For 20-plus years, Saundra Wimberley, first-grade teacher at Crestview Elementary, has volunteered to take her students to Candlelight at the Ranch to recreate scenes from a frontier classroom. 

To prepare her own students to reenact scenes from a 19th-century one-room schoolhouse, Wimberley teaches a series of history lessons at Crestview about the first settlers to West Texas and their hardships and triumphs. 

Wimberley brings the Ranching Heritage Center’s traveling trunk to Crestview to teach the whole first grade about pioneer life, settlers on the West Texas Plains, map out a timeline for all of that, discuss holiday traditions they had, but especially how the children lived, played and were schooled. 

“Students begin to understand their own place in history after they’ve seen the past,” Wimberley said. “They’ve walked in the shoes of the children in our local history by being in that schoolhouse and having to act, dress, and talk as those children would have.” 

Then the ones who can participate go to do the Candlelight at the Ranch event with Wimberley. They sing songs, tell tales from the time, discuss 1890’s kids’ lives like, “how far did you walk to school today”, write on slates, listen to stories, have a couple of spelling bees each night, and do a lot of laughing…while thousands of people walk by and observe them. Usually close to 10,000 people attend the Candlelight at the Ranch Event.  

Wimberley had 17 of her 21 Crestview students participate this year, plus six of their older siblings, who were previously Wimberley's students. The older ones are great helpers, along with setting the scene for a multi-grade level, one-room schoolhouse setting as being more historically accurate. 

“It’s a LOT of work, but ohhhhhhh, so worth it,” said Wimberley. 

For the last 22 years, Wimberley has taken her first graders to the Candlelight at the Ranch. However, she started going to Candlelight in high school, making this her 25th year to participate!