History of Santa Cruz Mountain Schools
By Debra Staab
California became a state in 1850, and less than two years later on May 13, 1852, the state designated 500,000 acres of public land for the express purpose of creating a public school system. There were restrictions—the land had to be public, it could not be part of either a Spanish or Mexican land grant, it could not hold any significant mineral value, and the size could not exceed 640 acres. Prices were as low as $1.25 per acre.
In California the Land Claims Commission struggled to interpret the parcel boundaries assigned by Spain and Mexico as written in Spanish nearly a century earlier. Many pioneers purchased school land warrants only to later learn that their property was located on a land grant. When this happened, the land owner would be given public land of equal value in a different location, a practice known as “floating the warrant”. Because there were no requirements to build a school on the property, many purchased the cheap land for speculation purposes and resold it at a profit.
At the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains in a town called Lexington, Louis Hebard built a one-room schoolhouse in 1859. At the time, it was the first and only school between San Jose and Santa Cruz. Later in 1911, when Alma had a larger population than Lexington, the first school was torn down and a new Lexington School was built in Alma.
When both Lexington and Alma were abandoned to make way for the Lexington Reservoir in 1952, students attended the Louise Van Meter School in Los Gatos. The third Lexington School opened on September 14, 1953 with 150 students. The Lexington Elementary School was rebuilt between 2012 and 2014 and remains in the same location today. It is part of the Los Gatos Union School District (LGUSD).
In the mid-1860s, the Summit School District was created and a school room was established in a private home at the corner of Summit Road and the Old Santa Cruz Highway near Schulthies lagoon. Reports state that children floated on logs in the lagoon over their lunch hour. The Summit School later moved to a more permanent location about a half mile north on the Old Santa Cruz Highway to a newly constructed facility built by Edward Martin. The old school house is now a private residence.
In 1877, Lyman Burrell donated land at the Summit for the Burrell School. The building burned to the ground in 1889, but the resilient local community rebuilt it by 1890. This was the first school to have both a flagpole and a bell. The school building is now part of the Burrell Winery.
The railroad town of Wright’s erected a school that served that community from the 1880s to 1929. It closed due to a dwindling population.
The Laurel School was nothing more than a cottage behind the RR depot where lessons were taught by Miss Rose Merrill. There were no exams, and the students had to supply their own books. When the school closed in 1947, the students were bused to Scotts Valley Union School.
The first classes at Highland School took place in 1881 in a small unused cabin. For the next school year, Judge Anson Stowe Miller donated a small plot of land and a new building was constructed. The 1906 earthquake seriously damaged Highland School, and in 1914 a new facility was built next to the old one. That building burned down in 1971. The older structure is now known as Highland Hall.
In 1906 several parents expressed concerns over the mile and a half walk uphill that their children had to endure to get to Highland School. These parents petitioned for a new school district, and on September 1, 1906 the Hester Creek School was opened by Miss C. Tempelten.
The lost lumber town of Loma Prieta had its own schoolhouse during its peak. It was situated just above the center of their 300 person village, and the instructor came up from Santa Cruz. After the lumber business died down, a Mr. Albretto Stoodley, who worked at the Loma Prieta Mill, dismantled the schoolhouse in 1904. Along with the wood from a couple of other abandoned cottages, he built himself a house at Opal Cliffs in Capitola.
Lakeside Elementary School, located at 19621 Black Road, was first operational in 1881. The original one-room building housed a single instructor and all grades one to eight until the mid-1950s. The district eventually grew to encompass neighboring schools Central, Brown, Castle Rock, and Fairview. Most of the buildings on the current campus were constructed in 1967. A kindergarten was added in 1984, and a community center was built in 2004. Lakeside is the only school in the Lakeside Joint School District (LJSD)
Combined, all the early small mountain schools educated around 100-200 children per year. A single instructor typically taught all grade levels from one to eight. At that time, an eighth grade education was deemed sufficient for most children. Children traveled to school by foot, horse, donkey, or buggy.
In 1949, the four summit mountain schools, Summit, Burrell, Highland, and Hester Creek, combined into the Loma Prieta Joint Union School District (LPJUSD). A brand new school was built at the Summit which opened on June 27, 1951. Two members of the Loma Prieta Museum, Roger Mason and Karl von Ahnen, were amongst those in the very first class. There were two grades per room, and the school initially had its own cafeteria.
The number of students in the LPJUSD continued to grow by about 35 to 45 students per year. By the early 1970s, the community began discussing the need for a middle school. It took three attempts to pass a bond measure to fund the new school construction. The new school opened in the fall of 1974 and was named C.T. English after a former district school supervisor who had died in the late 1960s.
In the 1980s the growing Summit district recognized the need for a community center. The construction was financed through fundraising, land sales, and a bond measure. Not only was the spacious building used for community events, it served as a gymnasium for the adjacent schools. The grand opening took place in November, 1988 with a festive dinner-dance party.
The state of California is known for its earthquakes, and in the 1980s they offered funds to schools wishing to increase the safety of their buildings. The Loma Prieta District joined the program and almost immediately discovered fissures under several structures. Portables were set up near CTE and the students moved in.
On October 17, 1989 at 5:04 pm the 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake, centered in the Forest of Nisene Marks, struck the area. All of the remaining Loma Prieta school buildings were damaged and more portables had to be erected. A new elementary school was built on the south campus near CTE. Giving a nod to history, the groundbreaking took place on October 17, 1992 and the project completed at 5:04 pm on October 17, 1994.
By the late 1990s all of the CTE buildings were showing their age—some were still closed from the ’89 quake. In 2002 Measure K was passed to fund the construction of a new middle school. The students attended their first classes on October 17, 2006.
In 2015 the community center was gutted in a fire caused by teenagers playing with fire. Laptops, musical instruments, and other valuables were destroyed. Both the elementary and middle schools were canceled for a few days. Once again the district turned to the public for funding to rebuild. Measure R was passed in 2018 and provided $10.6 million to the LPJUSD for reconstruction.
Students in the Santa Cruz Mountains continue to have access to an excellent education. The current school districts LGUSD, LPUJSD, and LJSD, offer consistent high-quality learning opportunities to the mountain community.
Resources:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8pq1n4qt/qt8pq1n4qt.pdf?t=nr9n84
https://lex.lgusd.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=220349&type=d&pREC_ID=484318
https://patch.com/california/losgatos/election-results-measure-r-loma-prieta-jusd
https://www.lakesidelosgatos.org/copy-of-about-us
Payne, The Howling Wilderness, 1978, pp. 92-97.
Powell, The Tragedy of Martina Castro, 2021, pp. 149-150.
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