First settled as the community of Dykesboro in the 1830s, Cochran was incorporated in 1869 and named for Judge Arthur E. Cochran, while early resident Burrell B. Dykes donated the land on which the town was founded. In 1872, Dykes deeded a one-acre lot at the corner of Dykes and Third Streets for public education, and before a school building was erected, classes met in private classrooms and churches. The first schoolhouse there was the wood-framed Martha Ann Academy, named for Dykes' daughter, and in 1913 it was replaced by the two-story brick Cochran High School, equipped with a laboratory and library. As Cochran grew in the 1920s, more space was needed for both schools and local government, and in 1928 John H. Mullis completed a Colonial Revival City Hall and auditorium at Second and Dykes Streets that housed city offices, the fire department, the town's first public library, the Woman's Club, and classroom space; its auditorium later served graduations and movies. With Works Progress Administration assistance, the city built an elementary school on Third Street, a gymnasium for high school students, and remodeled the 1913 high school, completing the work in 1942 at a cost of about $85,000. Only the elementary school remains from those projects, after the gym burned in 1961 and the older school building was replaced by a modern library in 1986. Schooling was segregated, with only white students allowed to attend Cochran Elementary and High Schools, while African American teachers and schools received fewer resources and black students in Cochran attended a school on Thomson Street serving the Happy Hill community; Bleckley County schools were not fully integrated until 1970. Outside Cochran, smaller communities were once served by one- and two-room schoolhouses, but school buses later enabled attendance at larger consolidated schools, and in 1977 Cochran's city schools merged with the Bleckley County school system. After City Hall moved to West Dykes Street in 1966, the 1928 municipal building stood largely vacant until a restoration committee formed in 1991, and today the auditorium hosts civic and cultural events while offices there are used by local organizations and the former elementary school houses the Cochran Police Department and Municipal Court. Recognized for their importance in Cochran's educational, political, and women's history, the Cochran School and Municipal Buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.