STANTON - The way forward for Stanton is less clear than the road before.

If only the town's most illustrious citizen - Sakakawea - were still here to point the way.

The town and school board have made a tough decision to close their high school and some are planning to make the final graduation May 24 an event fitting what it symbolizes.

Stanton is not only the county seat and oldest community in Mercer County, it operates the school district of longest standing, 120 years.

The town is colorful, with roots in riverboat days on the Missouri River and a connection to American Indians. It sits at the heart of ancient Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara earthlodge settlements, and Sakakawea herself lived in an earthlodge village a scarce half mile from the city limits.

For all that, Stanton faces what nearly all small districts are facing, fewer kids every year and the need to get together with somebody to make a viable high school.

While the board forges ahead to reorganize with the neighboring Center School District, the community is getting ready to watch its last graduating class go forward to receive a diploma.

There'll be 11 of them this last year.

A last class coming along one of these years was perhaps inevitable, but still, it won't be easy.

Jesse Krieger, class of '76 and the school's speech pathologist and psychiatrist, said he thought the final graduation merited more than a passing nod.

"That's why we're doing this, so we don't just come here and it's the last graduation and that's it," he said.

Krieger, along with Faye Roth, Julie McLain and Amber Skalsky are organizing an open house from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the school, hours leading up to graduation.

The open house will feature the obligatory sheet cake and coffee.

More, they'll set out memorabilia in the form of old yearbooks, old photographs and trophies for people to browse through.

All alumni and former staff members will be special guests at graduation and are invited to take a walk through the high school wing.

The committee hopes to arrange for one more rendition of the old school song.

Stanton always has been a town that loved its school. In past years, townspeople have taken on substantial mill levy increases to keep the school operating.

When the town hosts an all-school reunion, like it will again in 2005, alumni flock back and their happiness at being together is apparent. They're like a town of all brothers and sisters from one big rowdy family.

Skalsky, who was a Klindworth, class of '95, is the high school principal and part-time instructor at Stanton.

"You form a family bond when you go through all those years together with the same few kids," she said. "We knew we needed to do something, have a kind of time of remembering."

Skalsky said the school is a major thread in the fabric of her own history. Her grandmother Ada Klindworth was a longtime teacher, and she herself is an alumna and now an administrator.

Stanton plans to keep an elementary school in operation, though how long it does depends on how many younger kids follow a high school sibling to a different school district.

Some parents don't like to split their children between schools, and those personal decisions will play a part in how long a Stanton elementary is viable.

Roth, formerly a Schumann and class of '92, teaches a combination first and second grade at Stanton, and is happy her own children have had a chance to attend. She hopes they can finish their elementary school days in Stanton.

Time, like it has so much else, will tell.

The school, now anchoring the end of the business street, has been an important part of the community for 120 years.

"We want this to be a celebration of something good," said Krieger.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or scoop@ndonline.com.)