A Project of the Dane County Historical Society

The Dane County Historical Society established the “I Remember Madison Central High” project to collect the history of Madison’s Central High School, which was closed in 1969. This includes scanned copies of the Madison Mirror, a memories blog, and digital collection of the yearbook Tychoberahn. 

Madison Central High School Student Newspaper The Madison Mirror 

The Dane County Historical Society has scanned original copies of The Madison Mirror, the student newspaper from Madison Central High School, to make digital or electronic copies of the full text available for free online, it can be found on the website YUMPA by clicking here. (Access to the website might require the creation of a free account.)

The project was complete in June 2008, thanks to all Board Members and friends who helped make this happen– most notably Joanne Jensen and Beverly Kneebone

Madison Central High School Yearbook Tychoberahn

In June 1969, Madison’s Central-University High School held its final commencement exercises, a ceremony that signaled the end of an era.  Dane County’s oldest public high school began in 1853 in the basement of a Methodist Church, with 90 pupils and one teacher.  Throughout its history, the institution had various names.  It began as Madison High School; became Madison Central High School in 1922 when a new East High School became Madison’s second high school, and finally changed to Central-University High School in 1965 when intern teachers from the University of Wisconsin became part of the teaching staff.

To learn more about the publication and history of the yearbook, and to view the complete, digitized collection visit the Tychoberahn page.

The Memories Blog

DCHS is interested in collecting the stories of Central High alumni to be read alongside the student newspaper.

To make this project into a living, growing resource, we’ve added the Central High Memories Blog. Here we collect stories from anyone who wants to share them, post them to the blog, and allow others to comment on the stories and share even more memories. We hope this site will be a constantly evolving repository of history, along with being a place people can visit to take a walk down “memory lane”. To add your own, Contact the Society.

Future Plans and Related Links

You can help! Consider a donation of time, money, or materials and artifacts you have in your attic from Central High.

Madison Central High School History (1854-1969) is a blog that includes interesting stories and information. The latest update in 2009.

Photos of Central High Available on Online

Wisconsin Historical Images from the Wisconsin State Historical Society has a treasure trove of historical photographs on their site, including photos of Central High. To browse the collection, search for “Central High School”.

Madison, Wisconsin CHS Alumni’s Photostream

CHS Class of 1966 Reunion Photos

If you know of a website, blog, online photo album about Central High, School please Contact the Society, and we’ll add it here!