The first school building in east Granite Falls was a 20 by 30 foot structure erected in 1873 at a cost of $1,500, and its first teacher was C.E. Clark. Enrollment continued to grow, and in the summer of 1879 a new school district was organized on the west side of the river. After using the one-room school from 1873 to 1878, the district built a new school at a cost of $4,400 on a rocky rise between Elm Street and Granite Street. The east side school closed in the late 1920's, and a bell from the school was preserved for many years by the Yellow Medicine County Historical Society on a rocky monument built by volunteer workers George Swanson, K. Sorenson, and Willis Johnson.