Brief History: The school opened with 59 students and 9 grades, beginning with kindergarten. By 1911, there were 11 buildings and annual enrollment grew to 300 students. It was noted in the 1920s that almost two-thirds of the students attending the school were missing one or both parents. Students at the school grew a variety of crops and also cared for livestock. After the school's closure, the campus was turned into an insane asylum.

One student wrote the following poem:

Six o'clock in the morning, our breakfast comes around. A bowl of mush and molasses was enough to knock you down. Our coffee's like tobacco juice, our bread is hard and stale. And that's the way they treat you at Mt. Pleasant Indian jail.