History

 

Luther Preparatory School is a four year secondary school owned and operated by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. It offers a challenging college preparatory curriculum in grades 9-12 to students who are considering the full time pastoral or teaching ministry as their life’s work.

Luther Preparatory School is the oldest Lutheran high school in the United States.  It traces its history to its founding on this campus in 1865 as the prep department of Northwestern College.  The prep department was given its own identity in 1974 as Northwestern Preparatory School.  Luther Prep today is the result of a merger of Northwestern Preparatory School of Watertown, Wisconsin, and Martin Luther Preparatory School of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  Martin Luther Preparatory School had been established in 1979 when Martin Luther Academy was moved from its original home on the campus of Dr. Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota, and when Northwestern Lutheran Academy in Mobridge, South Dakota, was closed.

Luther Preparatory School is the successor school to those prep schools which have preceded it and can readily claim the heritage and history of these schools as its own.