History

A walk through Mission Middle School takes visitors on a 150 year history tour of education in Bellevue. Mission is one of many names for the Bellevue Public Schools building located on the northwest corner of Mission Avenue and Washington Street.

It was known as Bellevue School District #1 until 1911, when it was renamed Main School. In the early 1950s, the school became known as Bellevue Junior/Senior High School and educated students grades 7-12. In February 1962, when the new Bellevue Senior High School opened for grades 10-12, the school was again renamed to Bellevue Junior High School for grades 7-9.

The Bellevue School District continued to grow and soon needed another junior high school. When the second junior high was built in 1966, students that went to the new school and students remaining at Bellevue Junior High School helped name the two buildings by sending recommendations to the Bellevue Board of Education. The new junior high became Logan Fontenelle Junior High, and the first Bellevue Junior High School became Mission Junior High School. When ninth grade students were returned to Bellevue East and West High Schools, the 7-8 grade junior highs adopted the new popular name, middle schools.

The name Mission honors the first new school built in Bellevue by the Presbyterian Board of Missions. In 1846, the Presbyterians built a school complete with classrooms and housing quarters for Omaha, Pawnee, and Otoe children. They were educated here until the Omahas sold their land to the federal government in 1854 just before the Nebraska Territory was created.

The Omahas kept 300,000 acres in Thurston County and gave one square mile of land in present day Bellevue to the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Mission Middle school is located on this historical Mission Reserve, which was the largest part of the land included in the first plat of Bellevue that was approved by the Territorial Legislature in January 1856.