When and What:  This is the Mound Senior High School built for Mound students and those of most of the adjacent rural communities. I show this old photo first because it is the location from where those on the next page, and the one below it, were taken. This new Mound High School on Lynwood and Commerce Boulevard was built in 1917 while Mound alumni of the "old" school a block to the east (later Tonka Toys) were in hideous European trenches fighting World War I. Also at the time when the great influenza epidemic was killing tens of millions world wide, including people of Mound. The perverse nature of this plague was that it primarily killed people in their late teens to early thirties, instead of the older and weaker people.

The school was built on what was then the north end of town. If you traversed any further north on "graveled and dirt" highway 110 you would immediately find productive family farms and a few lake cottages. This building burned on the night before school started in September 1963. A problem with the old boilers was believed to have been the cause of the fire. People who lived in the dark rural country could see the orange glow for well over 15 miles and drove to Mound to mill around in the carnival atmosphere that existed. I don't believe there was a home coming bon fire that year. The "Pods" were built in it's place. The newer addition built in 1938 and the auditorium survived with minimal damage. In 1999 it too met it's end as did the hexagonal pods section built in 1964.