School (Capalaba being the informal name for the district) opened with 22 students, rising to 43 students by 1884. However, student numbers fell when the sawmills closed and the opening of the Cleveland railway line in 1889 meant Capalaba was not longer on the main route to Cleveland which further depressed the district's economy. In 1912 the teachers' residence at the school burned down. In 1922 the school was declared closed and its school building was to be relocated, but pressure from the local residents resulted in the school reopening in 1924. The population in the district increased during the Great Depression in the 1930s as people moved to Capalaba from Brisbane to find cheaper housing, enabling the school to have a sufficient enrolment to maintain the school. In 2005 it merged with adjacent Capalaba State High School to create Capalaba State College, using the combined sites. The town was originally officially known as Tingalpa, presumably taking its name from the creek, this caused confusion due to the existence of another area of the same name and so in 1927 the town's name was officially changed to Capalaba (the name in common use). In July 1925, local Methodists began to raise funds to build a church. By 1975 a Methodist church had been established in Ney Road. The first drive-in movie theatre in Queensland opened at Capalaba in December 1955 at the corner of Redland Bay Road and Mount Cotton Road (). In 1979 it was closed to make way for the construction of the Capalaba Park Shopping Centre. The drive-in was re-established in 1980 at 188-216 Redland Bay Road (behind the ten-pin bowling alley, ). The drive-in closed in 1997. The construction of the Leslie Harrison Dam (completed in 1968) created a major source of freshwater for the then Redland Shire in the 1960s. This led to considerable growth in residential, commercial and industrial land during the 1970s in this former rural area. Continued urban growth led to the district being split becoming two suburbs on either side of Tingalpa Creek with the suburb of Capalaba in Redland Shire (to the east of the creek) and the suburb of Capalaba West (now Chandler) in the City of Brisbane (to the west of the creek). Capalaba State High School opened on 24 January 1978 on a site immediately east of the Capalaba State School at 53-59 School Road (). In