CONCRETE — It was supposed to look like Disneyland’s castle, but on Monday the old Concrete Elementary School was nothing but a burned-out shell.

The half-finished turrets and third floor were gone, the windows shattered, and charred pages of old school books mingled with ashes.

A fire Sunday afternoon drew more than 100 spectators and five fire departments as the blaze engulfed the former elementary school. Flames did not reach the adjoining District Building, which dates from 1910, but the much larger 1938 addition was destroyed.

By 3 p.m. Monday, Concrete firefighters declared the last of the spot fires out and were rolling up yards of yellow fire hose. But the question of how and why one of the town’s most noted buildings was destroyed still burned.

County fire inspectors and Concrete firefighters called the fire’s cause “suspicious” because the long-abandoned building had no power. But so far, little more is known.

Deputy County Fire Marshal Kevin Noyes said fellow Deputy Fire Marshall Kelly Blaine is leading the investigation and that Blaine was interviewing witnesses Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, Noyes and others began their on-site investigation.

“We haven’t really started looking, digging inside,” said Noyes. It could be days before the county completes the investigation and more is known.

Former owners of the buildings and several town residents said Monday that the building had deteriorated in recent years and that trespassers and broken windows were a regular problem.

“The stuff in there was waist deep or higher, all garbage,” said Concrete Chamber of Commerce President Valerie Stafford. “There were mattresses all over the place. People had basically been vandalizing it. Stuff was all over.”

Mary and Gale McFadden, who owned the building from 1987 to 1990, said they too had experienced problems with trespassers.

“I couldn’t keep the people out of there,” said Dale McFadden. “I finally left the door out back unlocked so people would quit breaking the window.”

Asked how he was coping in the wake of the fire, he replied, “My feelings are hurt. It meant a lot to us. This old school meant a lot to a lot of people.”

He recounted the work he put into the 33,000-square-foot building to ready it for his carpet shop and living quarters and for his tenants: an engineering firm, secondhand shop and author.

“We put 176 windows in that thing,” said McFadden, motioning upward to the charred concrete structure.

The upkeep became too much, and the McFaddens sold it to Jack Clifton, a man with an unusual plan.

“Remember that old Disneyland castle?” McFadden asked. He said Clifton’s boyhood dream was to have that castle and that he purchased the school to fulfill that wish.

“He’s different. Everybody thought he was nuts, but he wasn’t,” said McFadden.

On Monday, word circulated that Clifton might return to his once half-finished and now completely decimated endeavor, but others were more skeptical.

“He said he’d never be back,” said Philip Johnson, a Concrete resident who said Clifton now lives in Snohomish County.

Concrete Fire Chief Rich Philips said he expects Clifton to revisit his school-turned-castle by the end of the week. He also expects fences to soon surround it and for demolition to follow.

Stafford said she hopes the town will do more to preserve its history in the wake of this fire. Though the building had become an eyesore and nuisance in her mind, she said she still had strong memories of attending elementary school there in the 1950s.

She remembers the old blackboards, the teachers, the classrooms and the books.

Mary McFadden saved a scrap from the wreckage to remind her of the old school and its library. “The library it was all cherry wood, and the bookcases still had the books in them — 5,000 books.”

She now has just a scrap of one page of one of those many books.

• Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at .