Old Dodge School served as one of two branch camps in Hall County housing German prisoners of war. On July 9, 1944, Leo B. Stuhr, president of the county Non-Stock Labor Association, announced plans to use the school for this purpose. About one hundred German POWs lived at this site while working in construction and agriculture. The POWs were repatriated to Germany in 1946, and the school briefly served as Grand Island YMCA headquarters before it was demolished in 1948.