Linden Public Schools history

The first one-room school building was erected in 1867 and used by all denominations for church services and for all town meetings and entertainment.

By 1872, a male teacher and female teacher were hired and two years later, the school had a staff of three, a male teacher as principal and two female assistants.

In 1875, there were enough students to warrant a form of departmentalization: Mr.

My grandmother, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Stephens, was born in Linden in 1876 and grew up there.

In 1882, when my grandmother, Lizzie Stephens, was six years old, the residents of Linden decided it was high time they built a decent school.

The number of Lake Linden and Hubbell children had been steadily increasing since the first high school classes had been offered in 1883.

Two years later, in 1885, the first class was graduated.

The first male student to graduate was Samuel Eddy in a class of four pupils in 1886.

Starting in July of 1887, many changes were made in the Lake Linden-Hubbell school building.

Linden was one of six communities in Iowa County that had a free high school in 1895; the others were in Dodgeville, Highland, Mineral Point, Avoca and Cobb.

Many years later, in 1898, she married my grandfather, William “Will” Fitzsimons.

In 1905, a large addition was built onto the school.

Ulseth's bid was accepted on July 17, 1915, and one month after receiving the contract, Mr.

Linden High School began classes in 1921.

Faull and Lois Alton, who was one of four graduates in 1954, fondly recall Linden High School’s final years.

The year before, in 1958, the Iowa-Grant School District had been created by consolidating 26 former area rural and village school districts.

After a transitional year in which students fanned out to several different schools, all area high school students began attending the newly constructed, consolidated Iowa-Grant High School near Livingston, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1960.

Several years later, on December 17, 1974, at a regular meeting of the School Board, the members decided that the school district should purchase twenty lots of property from Universal Oil Products Company for the sum of $12,000 when it became available.

Beginning in the fall of 1982, and for the ensuing decade, Linden children through eighth grade were bused to Cobb, Wisconsin, six miles away.

Then, in 1992, all area kindergarten through eighth-grade students from Cobb, Rewey, Linden, Livingston, and Montfort, and the surrounding rural areas, began attending the new Iowa-Grant Elementary/Middle School near Livingston, on the same campus as the high school.

This property was located behind the school, between Torch Lake and the school. It also contains the new elementary school that was opened to student use in 1998.

Elizabeth Stephens, is in the back row, far left. ©2014 Harold William Thorpe