To meet the growing educational needs of Cooleemee and Jerusalem Township, a new brick school was built here, with its center 80 yards northwest, and Cooleemee High School was ready for occupancy on February 10, 1923. It eventually included grades one through eleven. The modern building had sixteen classrooms and an auditorium seating 1,000, with a 38'x60' stage that also served as a basketball court. From its beginning, the school and community were closely connected, with the auditorium hosting school plays, music recitals, basketball tournaments, commencement ceremonies, J.C. Sell's annual fiddlers conventions, and lectures by the travelling Chautauqua group. A community cannery was added to the school yard in the 1930s, the Cooleemee School PTA was chartered in 1938, and in the 1930s the County Board of Education and the Works Progress Administration built eight new classrooms. In 1925 the senior class published its first year book. A 1948 county bond referendum, promoted by Erwin Mills, Textile Union #251, and school officials, funded another wing, a new gymnasium with 1,000 seats on roll-away bleachers, an industrial arts shop, a new home economics classroom, and a basement cafeteria seating 150 students and staff. Principals included Samuel Holton, W. T. Moore, E.W. Junker, George E. Smith, G. R. Madison, and V.G. Prim, and many beloved teachers served there. The Class of 1956 was the last to graduate from Cooleemee High School. The building was demolished and set ablaze in 1974 despite the distress of local citizens. In 1998, a time capsule was buried 18 yards north of this spot for Cooleemee's Centennial year, to be opened in 2048.