Welcome

Welcome to Garehime Elementary School, where students are being prepared to succeed in the entrepreneurial age! Garehime provides a rich learning environment with students participating in a model city and every class operating a business or governmental agency. Our model city, Garehime Heights, includes a student-operated bank, post office, Environmental Protection Agency, City Council, Ambassadors, court system, art museum, bakery, florist, restaurant, and many more. Our student entrepreneurs also develop and run their own independent businesses, complete with business licenses, profit-and-loss reports, advertising, quality control, sales, and customer service. 

Garehime students earn Garehime Gold, our school currency, and spend it throughout the year at Going to Town Days when classroom and student businesses are in operation selling handmade products and services. Our Garehime citizens learn and live by the Lifeskills and Lifelong Guidelines. Instruction is based on the latest brain research on how children process and retain new information. Each year to engage and motivate students, our curriculum is integrated with our year long theme.

Namesake

Cora Edith Garehime was born August 14, 1898, to Harvey and Ida Mae Mellott in Eudora, Kansas. They were large cattle ranchers. Edith's family consisted of 9 children, five brothers and three sisters. At the age of 18 she met Jacob W. Garehime at a dance where he was playing violin and cornet. After a short courtship they were married on November 8, 1917, in Hugo, Colorado.

After their marriage the two homesteaded a small parcel of land in Stratton, CO. Their family was soon started and three children were born: Wilma, June and Jake, Jr. During this time Mr. Garehime was studying piano tuning and repairs by correspondence courses.
They left the homestead and moved to Delta, CO, where Mr. Garehime sold pianos on consignment and repaired and tuned them. He also played music for silent movies and the local dances.

Due to the health of their youngest daughter, the doctor advised them to take her to a lower altitude. They decided in 1924 to move to Los Angeles, CA. On their way they stopped in Las Vegas to visit Edith's younger brother who was a carpenter and volunteer fireman for the Las Vegas Fire Department. Mr. Garehime liked Las Vegas and met with Mr. Parks of the First National Bank. Mr. Parks told him of an opportunity to oversee and collect rent on some stores for Mrs. Blodell, who lived in Los Angeles. Mr. and Mrs. Garehime saw this as a wonderful opportunity and worked out an arrangement in which they would take one of the stores for collecting the rent. Thus, the first Garehime Music and Jewelry Store was founded in 1924. At that time only railroaders could buy houses so they started their new life in Las Vegas in a tent house at the corner of 10th and Stewart. It had a wooden floor and a canvas roof covered with a wooden roof to insulate it from the sun. Little by little the tent house developed into a real house where Edith lived until 1984.

During the years the music store moved to 7 different locations as times changed. During the depression in 1931, an addition was built onto the home at 10th and Stewart, and the Garehime Music Store was located there until 1941 when a two story building was built at 115 North Third Street. After Mr. Garehime's death in 1960, the property was leased to the Fremont Hotel and the store torn down. The showroom of the hotel now stands there. The store moved to 955 Sahara Avenue where it remained until 1988.