One of the key roadblocks to further education in the early 20th century was transportation. The high schools in the area were located in towns and would require rural students to find their own way into town each day to attend. Economics and the busy schedules of farmers made this a very difficult trick to manage. Plus, in those days, boys were expected to help out on the home farm or to find some type of employment with local farmers. So, attending through 8th grade was considered enough education.

Sometime in the late 1940s, several small one-room school districts include Bridge School, consolidated into what is now called Dundee Community Schools whose nickname is the Vikings. With the advent of reliable bus transportation, it was more efficient to provide schooling at one location for large numbers of students.

Of the 13 children of William Carl and Mary (Rambow) Heiden, only the youngest two, Wilma (Heiden) Bicking and Norma "Jeanie" Heiden attended Dundee High School. Norma, in fact, was the Salutatorian of her graduating class. All of the other children attended Bridge School through the 8th grade.

In the post-WWII years, many, many children of the Heiden family attended community school in Dundee or Ida. Many of them in Dundee started in kindergarten at the far east end of the large building and continued through high school west end of the building shown above. One picture included in the high school yearbook was one showing those who had attended all 13 years together in this one building.

With the onslaught of the large baby boom generation, schools all over the country were expanded to accommodate the increased enrollments. Dundee was part of this trend and the author was part of one of the first classes to go from kindergarten the east end of the old building to graduate from the new addition in 1966. Since that time, DHS has built an entirely separate, new high school across the street.
 

The post-war baby boom generation caused a major expansion of the school building to the north. The grandchildren of the generation of Heinrich, Ernst, William Carl and John Heiden were present in very many classes as they moved through DHS. Some of their great grandchildren and beyond currently attend the school.

The far east (right) end of the building was one of the two kindergarten classrooms when I attended from 1953 to 1966. Mrs Mominee (great name for a kindergarten teacher) was my teacher and Mrs. Elder taught the other class. As you moved up the grades in elementary school, you would progress from room to room toward the then high school at the left side of this picture above. I was part of the Baby Boom generation so, by the time I was 12 or 13 years old, part of the "old" high school was used for junior high classes. At the end of 8th grade, my class moved into the "new" high school which was built as an extension behind the old high school. My class of 1966 was, I believe, the first class to graduate totally from the new high school.

To the best of our knowledge, the building shown above was the original high school in Dundee when only a very small percentage of the population attended. The building still stood next to the end of the "new" school shown at the top of this page until in the early 1960s when it was torn down.

Finally, a few decades ago, a totally separate new high school was built a short distance away from the building shown here. This upgraded the facilities over those of the high school built in the early 1960s.