In 1919, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) established the Elementary Correspondence (EC) School to provide formal education for children living in rural areas with difficult access to a school. Through children's letters, this paper interrogates the concept of place, a key one for placed-based approaches to environmental education. Place-based education has focused on natural and rural environments to engage students in environmental learning, sometimes presenting the desirability of connectedness to nature and the local community with nostalgia and romanticism. Children's letters suggest that their learning has long been shaped by their places, material and imaginary, and that the EC school was a place as important as nature in children's learning and schooling. Children's letters contribute a rich historical perspective that helps to rethink the rural/urban divide into a relationship of mutual constitution of childhood and nature across time and space.