The Orchard School District was founded as a political subdivision on May 19, 1856. That might be too conventional a statement with which to begin an account of its history were it not for the sheer remarkability of the date. For the school to have been organized by that early day, three men had to meet in a small Missouri town twelve years earlier.

All pictures and much of the text for the Orchard School History pages were borrowed from the book, Orchard School: A Narrative History, written by Richard Keller.