It stretches from the lowlands of Vancouver to the Cascade Mountains. Volcanic Mount St. Helens, which erupted with a vengeance in 1980 and looms above the Southwest Washington landscape, is just 10 miles outside of the district’s northeast boundary. The district celebrated its centennial in 2009-2010. A hundred years earlier, during the presidency of William Howard Taft, two one-school districts – Maple Grove and Dublin – merged and consolidated into what is today the Battle Ground district. During the first six and a half decades, 54 small, rural districts folded into it, the last one – Yacolt -- in 1975. Today, Battle Ground Public Schools serves 13,000 students.