DURHAM — One of the largest turnouts in recent memory, estimated at between 500 and 800 people, attended a farewell celebration of Durham Elementary School’s 50 years in existence on Saturday.

Guest speaker Peter Hunter of Lisbon Falls, a member of the first eighth-grade graduating class in 1961, traced his Durham school days from a one-room school with a back field for a gym, a wood stove for heat and a “two-holer” to a “modern, four-room school with — can you imagine? — flush toilets.”

Festivities included a fun fair, cow-chip raffle, food tables, a video of the school from when it was under construction to the present, and pictures of various classes over the 50-year period. At the close of festivities, school secretary Debbie Purinton stepped up to the microphone and bid farewell, declaring: “The doors of Durham Elementary shall be locked forever, after today.”

The school and gymnasium are scheduled for demolition in early July. The new, 28-room Durham Community School will open for classes in September.