CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL first served the community in the late 1800's on South Main Street in Columbia, Tennessee. The exact location of this building is not known. In​ 1896 the first class of eleventh graders, which were mostly girls, graduated. The school then moved to the old Athenaeum property, once a prestigious girls' school, and began using their building in October 1901. In​ 1915 ​the school building on West Eighth Street was erected, and it was considered a "superior school plant" with such things as a gymnasium, an auditorium, and several science laboratories. In​ 1916​ the first twelfth graders graduated with a class which ​were mostly boys. Valiant efforts were made to save the old high school building, but it was razed. A small part of that school is now used by the Maury County Board of Education.

In the late 1950's, the school was considered outdated and outgrown, so Maury County built a new high school on Experiment Station Lane in 1961 (pictured above). This building served until May of 2015 as Columbia's public high school on what is now Lion Parkway (the street was renamed several years ago). Several additions were made over the years in an effort to remain progressive, such as the vocational building (1976) and the science wing (1990).

The school has weathered many changes. In 1969 complete integration took place with the closing of Carver Smith School. The enrollment has risen from less than a thousand in the sixties to more than nineteen hundred in the eighties. In 1988, the ninth grade was moved from Whitthorne Junior High to become a part of the high school, as it was earlier in the history of the school.