Originally known as the Carson Indian Training School, Stewart Indian School, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, provided vocational training and academic education for American Indian students from throughout the West for nearly a century.

W.D.C. Gibson, the first superintendent, renamed the boarding school in honor of U.S. Senator William Morris Stewart of Nevada, the principal figure in obtaining congressional authorization and funding for the institution.

In the early 1920s Superintendent Frederick Snyder initiated a stone building program. Students worked with stone masons, some of American Indian ancestry, to construct the handsome stone structures that still grace the grounds.