A story often told to children by their grandparents and parents about the arduous Journey, though hill and valley, in the snow and rain, to and from school everyday. While the tales themselves are more than likely just that, tales, for millions of school children in the United States, the journey to school was a very real obstacle. In rural communities getting to school would almost certainly be done on foot, and while small schools were spread out to ensure both towns and far flung farms could be covered.
A good illustration of how roads and population gatherings informed school placement can be seen in this story map on Rural Vermont schools, in 1857 (StoryMap JS).
The education of children had been a focus of early Puritan settlers, and the history of schooling in the United States reflects these earliest notions of professional schooling. Here is a timeline of some of the most important steps that led to the Decline in Rural Schooling (Timeline JS) and gave way to the K-12 system used throughout the United States today.