Dixie Academy/ St. George Children's Museum

It took two years to build the Dixie Academy building; the Richardsonian Romanesque style massive structure was finished in 1911. The foundation of the two-story building atop a raised basement is made of grey volcanic rock. Pink sandstone was quarried east of St. George and the slabs were hauled to the site on the running gear of wagons. Skilled stone masons cut the individual stones to build the walls and intricate central archway entrance below a tripartite window arrangement. The water table and lintels are concrete, colored and cut to resemble stone. Individual classrooms flanked a central hallway on the basement and main floors. A two-story rear wing housed lavatories and a boiler room.

The LDS Church partly funded the construction of the school building, contributing $20,000 on the condition that the remaining $35,000 would come from the citizens of St. George in funds and donation of time and materials. Before the Dixie Academy building was completed, the local Woodward School offered only two years - ninth and tenth grades - of high school level education in town. The St. George Stake Academy offered two years of high school and added two years of college courses in the 1915 to 1916 school year.

The upper floor was used initially as a gymnasium for the St. George Stake Academy. When a new building just north of this structure was finished in 1916, the school's gymnasium moved into it. The upper level became an auditorium with a pressed tin ceiling. The LDS Church discontinued its funding of the educational institution in 1933. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Old Dixie College Main Building in 1980. The building is significant as an example of the region's late nineteenth/early twentieth century educational architecture and as one of only two surviving buildings on the original campus of Dixie College. The other survivor, the adjacent gymnasium building, was scheduled to be demolished in the early 1980s. The college campus contained four buildings by the time of its relocation in 1963, with the Dixie Academy building used as the Administration Building.

The City of St. George installed an elevator around 2005, matching the original sandstone as closely as possible. The city added a new roof and demolished a stage and partitions that had been added later to the upper floor space during renovations in the mid 2000s.

The St. George Children's Museum's motto is "Discover, Imagine, and Create" and its exhibits encourage creative play. Admission is $5 per person with under age two admitted free.

Bowen, Dawn. Dixie Academy, Historical Marker Database. June 16th 2016. Accessed September 13th 2020. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=1392.

Larsen, Tiana. St. George Community Development Dept.. Landmark and Historic Sites: City of St. George. Edition First. St. George, UT. City of St. George, 2009.

Sanders, Gary. Letter from City of St. George Community Arts to WCHS re: renovation of Dixie Academy, Washington County Historical Society. January 4th 2008. Accessed September 13th 2020. https://wchsutah.org/buildings/dixie-academy-building9.pdf.

Washington County Historical Society. Dixie Academy Building, St. George, Utah, Buildings. January 1st 2020. Accessed September 13th 2020. https://wchsutah.org/buildings/dixie-academy-building.php.

Whiteside, Henry O. Johnson, Diana. NRHP Nomination of Dixie College Main Building. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1980.