Six years later both the park and the dreamers had grown up enough that Disneyland decided to host an event aimed at kids who might be outgrowing their mouse ears: an all-night prom.

The details of the evening are scant because the photos, taken by staff photographers Ralph Crane, J.R. Eyerman and Grey Villet, never ran in the magazine. But one thing is clear: the kids had a blast. With the spinning teacups, water rides, a big band, and romance in the air (and on display for some of the couples, especially on the carousel) all the elements were there for a magical night in the magic kingdom.

Take a look and see for yourself. And if you want to read more about the creation of Disneyland, please consider LIFE’s special tribute issue Inside Disney Parks: The Happiest Place on Earth.

Students walking inside Disneyland during their all-prom-night, United States, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People attending the all-night prom at Disneyland, Anaheim, California, June 1961

J.R. Eyerman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People attending the all-night prom at Disneyland, Anaheim, California, June 1961.

J.R. Eyerman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, Anaheim, California, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Students getting their prom pictures during All Night Prom at Disneyland – Photographs of an all-night high school prom held at Disney Land

People riding the carousel during all night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night high school prom held at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all night high school prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, Anaheim, California, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night high school prom held at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People riding a gondola boat during an all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Students participating in a high school all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

J.R. Eyerman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night high school prom held at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Band playing at an all-night prom at Disneyland, Anaheim, California, June 1961.

J.R. Eyerman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night high school prom held at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenage boys sit at cafe tables outside of Tomorrowland during an all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An all-night prom at Disneyland, 1961.

Grey Villet/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post An All-Night Prom at Disneyland, 1961 appeared first on LIFE.

LIFE’s yearbook assigned senior superlatives, such as most popular girl (Jeanette Duggan), most talkative girl (Judy Krug) and best student (Jimmy Edwards). It recognized the students” favorite teachers, like foreign language teacher Helen Ignelzi (“a fanatic on irregular verbs!”) and English teacher Mary Church (“she did a mean Charleston, but she really dug the cha-cha-cha”). And it recounted the students” fondest memories of their final year in high school, “like the time Mr. Zara came to school in a red nightgown.”

Despite LIFE’s yearbook’s similarities to the ones hot off the presses this year, perhaps the most striking difference between those students and today’s is one that’s not visible in the photographs: their future plans. In 1960, just a couple of years later, fewer than half of high school graduates enrolled in college. Nearly 50 years later, the number is approaching 70%.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

GORDON PARKSGordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School football captain Butch Lopez scored a dramatic touchdown in a football game against Uniondale High School in New York, 1958.

Gordon Parks/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School business teacher Louis Zara hiked up his pants while giving a lecture in his classroom, 1958.

Gordon Parks/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School students filed past the school portico on the way to class, 1958.

Gordon Parks/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hempstead High School class of 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

June 23, 1958 issue of LIFE magazine.

Gordon Parks LIFE Magazine

June 23, 1958 issue of LIFE magazine.

Gordon Parks LIFE Magazine

June 23, 1958 issue of LIFE magazine.

Gordon Parks LIFE Magazine

June 23, 1958 issue of LIFE magazine.

Gordon Parks LIFE Magazine

June 23, 1958 issue of LIFE magazine.

Gordon Parks LIFE Magazine

The post LIFE’s Celebration of a Year in High School, 1958. appeared first on LIFE.

In 1941, LIFE magazine paid tribute to the rite of spring in a series of photographs that the great Alfred Eisenstaedt made that year at and around graduation in the town of Mansfield, in north-central Ohio. More than seven decades later, Eisenstaedt’s warm, empathetic pictures convey the strangely mixed emotions that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever donned a cap and gown and walked across a stage to shake hands and receive a diploma: anxiety, pride, relief, excitement and, for most of us, not a little melancholy. This is, after all, the real and true end of something, even as it’s the beginning of something wholly new.

As LIFE put it in the magazine’s June 30, 1941, issue—less than six months, it’s worth noting, before Pearl Harbor and America’s sudden entry into World War II:

In the momentary dignity of caps and gowns, the 17-and-18-year-olds are going through one of the most exciting periods of their lives. This June, Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduated 283 of the year’s total of some 1,300,000 U.S. high-school graduates.

Mansfield graduates began their sad leave-taking on Class Day, listening to their class song, class poem, and class “will.” Their officers sat stiffly before a backdrop representing the graduation theme: the “Friendship,” an imaginary superliner in which graduates were supposed top take off into the future. Later in the week came a baccalaureate service, a class picnic, a formal dinner and dance, finally the climactic event of the commencement. In the outdoor stadium proud parents looked on nostalgically while the new graduates switched their tassels of their mortarboards from left to right, sign for over half the class that their formal education was finished.

To Mansfield this was only another commencement, in spite of the lengthening shadow of war. Though a girl’s class poem had sympathized with “our ill-starred cousins” in England and given thanks for “our native land,” a poll showed that only 9.2 percent of the class believed that the U.S. should fight in the war. If on its outcome depended the survival of their system of free public education in the pleasant security of central Ohio, Mansfield’s seniors were only aware that, in their own slang, graduation had been “superslubgupious,” or in other words, wonderful.

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The last class in Economics was held outdoors on this long flight of stone steps in Middle Park.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Patricia Ann Bancroft practiced a Class Day poem in a three-room apartment where she lived with brother and widowed mother, a schoolteacher. The following year the Bancrofts planned to double up with relatives to save money so that Pat could go to college.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pat’s graduation presents were a suitcase, slippers, stockings, pin and a $25 check from a relative. Pat planned to use the money to buy a typewriter.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pat was tapped for the National Honor Society award for scholarship and leadership.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At Class Day.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the baccalaureate service in a Lutheran church, seniors were exhorted to “render service to society.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the top left is the school valedictorian, Julia Loraine Fishback, who earned a scholarship to Swarthmore, where she planned to study occupational therapy. Top right: Lillian Art, voted ‘Prettiest Girl in the Class’; her widowed mother worked for Mansfield’s largest industry, Westinghouse Electric, and she planned to become a secretary. The students in the lower left and right photos were unidentified.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jim Gorman’s graduation present was this second-hand Ford, piled high with friends in front of high school. Jim’s father was a well-to-do manufacturer, and Jim was planning to attend Lehigh University.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This hayride and class picnic took place at novelist Louis Bromfield’s farm three days before commencement. The seniors contributed 25 cents each toward the cost of food. Later in the evening, Bromfield threw them a barn dance.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High school seniors nearing graduation, Mansfield, Ohio, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the class dinner and dance the next night, the kids dressed up in their formalwear. Reportedly, no one spiked the punch.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Last Days of High School: Mansfield, Ohio, 1941 appeared first on LIFE.

But back in the day specifically, back in 1958, students at an Ohio high school simply had to stay awake in order to get their names and faces in the June 9, 1958, issue of LIFE magazine. Stay awake and dance, that is. And go riverboating. And eat breakfast. And ride roller coasters. And dance some more. . . .

“Traditionally,” LIFE noted, “senior proms are the high school students’ big night to howl. To keep them happy and off the roads and ultimately wear them out, many high schools now sponsor all-night dances. The only trouble is that each generation seems to take longer to wear out.”

The article continued:

Students at Mariemont High School near Cincinnati came close to the ultimate this year when they put on a “prom” that lasted almost 32 hours. It started with a progressive dinner (spaghetti to strawberry cake), followed by a formal but highly energetic dance. Then the students boarded a river boat for a cruise and dancing to a jazz combo. Dawn found them somewhat subdued and back at the school for breakfast. Sent home for a short rest period, they emerged refreshed and descended on an amusement park. By nightfall half the students had discovered they were mortal and had gone home to bed. The rest whipped up another dance. “It keeps getting better and better,” one said, “as I get more and more numb.”

Original caption: “Formal dance held at the Kenwood Country Club was only traditional part of Mariemont’s prom.”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Informal games started at progressive dinner. Here students pull each other off in ‘chicken.'”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Third dance was held at the amusement park. Here couples gather around as band plays ‘Tequila.'”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “A chilly dawn as boat neared dock quenched some student fire. Most revived after hot breakfast.”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “River Cruise was kept lively by dancing. Here Leslie Ingram and Jim Rockaway lead a bunny hop.”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Snoozing in sun at park pool, Nancy Reynolds and Wally Wyatt nap to help keep them going.”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Roller Coaster ride keeps students moving. Holding hands in air during ride is judged brave.”

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mariemont High School Prom, Ohio, 1958.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post LIFE at an Extraordinary, All-Night Ohio Prom appeared first on LIFE.