On Monday morning, January 12, 1863, Prof. Bush opened the first term of the school, with seventeen boys and fourteen girls.

It gave farmers' boys like myself the opportunity of meeting those who were older, finer, more learned than they, and every day was to me like turning a fresh and delightful page in a story book, not merely because it brought new friends, new experiences, but because it symbolized freedom from the hay fork and the hoe."

Before going to the University of Chicago, the orientalist John Merlin Powis Smith taught Greek at Cedar Valley Seminary.

The school was closed in 1910 because, according to one historian, "Waldorf College was established in Forest City by the Norwegian Lutheran people and took away many students and much financial support that would naturally have come to the seminary; the grade of work in the public schools improved with time, and the Cedar Valley Seminary was a near neighbor.

[5] After a new foundation is built and renovations are completed, the building will be used as a community gathering place & home of Old Central Coffee.