The Oneida Stake Academy Photo courtesy Alan Smith

The Mormon Historic Sites Foundation helped raise the money necessary, $1.3 million, to allow the moving of the Academy. The Academy was moved to Benson Park in November 2003 to land donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Currently, the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation and the Oneida Stake Academy Foundation are gathering donations to allow the restoration of the Academy before the deadline of October 2006.

Beginning with the establishment of the Brigham Young Academy in Provo in 1875, the Church developed a series of academies in a corridor from Canada to Mexico to address the educational needs of Church members. In the 1880s, with the Edmunds-Tucker Act pending legal review by the Supreme Court, and with the influence of the federal government on the rise, religious training was effectively excluded from the public schools.

In 1888, Wilford Woodruff, Chairman of the Church Board of Education, wrote to all LDS stakes, including the Oneida Stake in southern Idaho, counseling formation of a stake board of education and decreeing it was "the duty of these boards to take into consideration the formation of church schools."

Photo courtesy Alan Smith

The Saints in the Oneida Stake in Preston, Idaho, responded financially, and plans for an attractive academy building to be constructed of cut stone were prepared by Church Architect Don Carlos Smith. Male members of the stake were called on missions to quarry and haul the stone. Construction on the building was completed and the Academy dedicated by Elder Moses Thatcher of the Quorum of the Twelve on 28 July 1895.

In the 1950s, the local high school was constructed just a few feet from the academy building, blocking its view from the street, and necessitating the removal of its original entrance steps. The academy has had its friends over the years who have attended to and preserved the building in a reasonable condition while hidden behind the high school. The Preston School Board decided that it must expand into the space occupied by the building and announced that it must either be moved or it would be demolished in the spring of 2003.

Architect's rendering of the restored Oneida Stake Academy building.