PARIS — Students in Alice Deegan’s sixth-grade class at Paris Elementary School are hoping to educate tourists and locals about the history of one-room schoolhouses and other local historic sites through a geocaching game that they are developing.

“History starts at home,” Principal Jane Fahey said of the service project the class is doing in collaboration with the University of Maine 4-H Camp & Learning Center in Bryant Pond.

The project allows students to use their research, interviewing and writing skills as they learn about the 20-plus one-room schoolhouses that once dotted the town.  Most of them have been either razed or burned over the years, but about a dozen still remain in Paris and several in West Paris, which seceded from Paris in 1957, Paris Cape Historical Society curator Ben Conant said. He recently led the students on a tour of the sites.

The students visited the one-room Hungry Hollow School on Route 26 that is now a home. They also visited former school sites, including where Burger King stands on Route 26.

The hope is to create a learning trail for tourists and residents — like the popular treasure-hunting game of geocaching — that will showcase the former one-room schoolhouses and other sites, including Cornwall Nature Preserve on Paris Hill and Lincoln Hall, now the Community Hall on Paris Hill.

“We want out-of-state people to learn about places in Paris,” student Rachel Newcomb said.

Deegan said the students have broken into groups to study several areas, including natural places, historic places and old schoolhouses. The students will make a stamp with a riddle to be placed in a waterproof geocache jar that will lead people on a historical tour of Paris.

“It’s like a scavenger hunt,” Fahey said.

Deegan, who was educated with her younger sister in a one-room schoolhouse in Bethel, said the tour will start at the old train station — it’s now Norway Soft Serve — and go up Paris Hill past the Cornwall Nature Preserve to the top of the hill, part of the Paris Hill Historic District. The tour will loop back around to the train station.

Students have learned that schools a century ago had no indoor plumbing. The first schoolhouse to have a toilet was the Shurtleff school district, which is now the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, Conant said.

The students also talked about whether the old schoolhouses should be restored or razed. Some thought the old buildings should be razed if they are unsafe or costly to restore. Others thought they should be restored because of their historical value, or be reused as schools, museums or restaurants, Deegan said.

The scavenger hunt is expected to be ready this spring.

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