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Phase One: Floodplain Development and Front Lawn Redesign

The John C. Haley Environmental Laboratory

The December 23, 1970 edition of the College High student newspaper, The Nautilus, featured an editorial campaign for the establishment of an outdoor environmental lab on the campus. Floodplain property east of the school was obtained, and the lab was dedicated on January 1, 1974.

It was named after John C. Haley, who had been a teacher, counselor, and vice-principal at the school, and then served as its principal from 1954 until 1973. Mr. Haley enjoyed the outdoors, including gardening and raising flowers, so the lab dedication was a fitting parting gift to him.

A pond was constructed on the property, which saw active use for some years despite the lack of good access to it across Shawnee Avenue. The photo showing students at the pond was published in the 1978 yearbook.

Over the years, however, the property became overgrown and run down. During the 1990s BHS biology teacher Betty A. Henderson's efforts to revitalize the lab were rebuffed, as the district planned to use the property in a future expansion project. The color photo shows how the pond access had deteriorated by the year 2000.

Before the bond issue for the current project, Mrs. Henderson and other BHS science teachers, with the able assistance of Earl Sears, who chaired the bond committee, convinced the district to construct a new and better pond on the re-developed floodplain to continue the Haley Lab in some form. However, the pond underwent extensive design changes as the floodplain was developed, making its use problematic at this point. After the development only two acres of the original sixteen were left for the environmental lab, and that helped convince the district to acquire about five additional acres to the east of the current floodplain parcel to expand the space available for the revised environmental lab.

The area east of Shawnee (outlined in red in the map below) was the original Haley Lab. The green area has been preserved as part of the new lab. There is an aerial photograph of the campus which shows the new lab's boundaries.

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Please direct any comments or suggestions regarding this page to:
Granger Meador, gmeador@bps-ok.org