The 46-acre campus played a key role in Boonville's identity as a popular 19th-century Missouri river town.

Boonville has more than 400 antebellum and other architectural sites on the National Register of Historic Places, including Kemper.

Its first year being a success, Mr. Kemper had the south wing of the long-time administration building constructed in 1845, and utilized the site as both a boarding school and as classroom space.

In 1856, the school closed when Professor Kemper accepted a teaching and administrative position at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

It was one of only a few schools in the state to remain open during the Civil War, partly due to Professor Kemper's willingness to accept female students for the first time.

However, it was widely known that his brother was Confederate General James L. Kemper, who gained fame as a primary participant in Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, and later became governor of Virginia.

Kemper's successor, alumnus Thomas A. Johnston, guided the school through its largest period of growth and established its national reputation.

By the mid-1880s, Johnston became "carried away with the idea...that military training for boys and future citizens had great educational value", according to Colonel A.M. Hitch's Centennial History of Kemper.

The Kansas City and St. Louis newspapers referred to the gridiron battle as the “Little Army-Navy Game”, and gave front-page coverage to the outcome.

The unstable management hurt most in the early 1970s, when many military schools struggled because of double-digit inflation and anti-military backlash caused by the Vietnam War.

The school employed different tactics to get enrollment up, including admitting female cadets in the 1970s, reviving junior college football in the 1980s, and instituting more liberal admissions policies.

The junior college football team, in particular, was a big money loser for the school, but achieved great on-field success and actually produced a number of NFL players, including Jamal Williams, long-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle for the San Diego Chargers, and future Green Bay Packers Torrance Marshall, the MVP of the 2001 Orange Bowl for the National Champion Oklahoma Sooners.

For many years, Kemper was also one of six military junior colleges that participated in the Army's two-year Early Commissioning Program (ECP), an Army ROTC program through which a qualified student could earn a commission as a second lieutenant after only two years of college.

After Kemper closed in 2002, the City of Boonville donated the school's records to the State Historical Society of Missouri-Columbia Research Center.

[1] As of 2012 a small building (named the Library Learning Center) was renovated and used by State Fair Community College for people pursuing an associate's degree or a high school equivalency diploma.

[6][7] At one time, Kemper was asked to be the location to shoot the movie National Lampoon's Animal House.

The president at the time, General Blakefield, declined the request, despite the financial opportunity it presented for Kemper, stating that "it portrayed the military school student as a radical."

The motion pictures Combat High and Child's Play 3 were filmed at the school with cadets and instructors serving as extras.

In September and October 2007, Kemper's abandoned campus was used for location shots for the movie Saving Grace, which is about a little girl's trip back to Boonville in the summer of 1951, during the Great Flood of 1951.

The movie, released in 2008, was directed by Connie Stevens and stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tatum O'Neal, Joel Gretsch, Piper Laurie and Michael Biehn.