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Bennett Valley beat Santa Rosa to its own name, incorporating as the Santa Rosa District in 1852.
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The first Lewis School District structure was built in 1860 on the corner of Lewis Road and Cemetery Lane (now Franklin Avenue) on land purchased by John Lewis from Marcus West. In 1916, it was deemed overcrowded and the 56-year old structure was replaced with a new Lewis School that opened in1922 on Lewis Road at Lomitas Avenue (now Chanate Road). It closed in 1980 when Hidden Valley Elementary School opened. -
1865 articles mention a school tax and a new school being built across from the "Hood" house on the "road to Sonoma". Both appear to be about the Fourth Street School. In 1906, the school is referred to as the "Fremont School" in a newspaper article by the Santa Rosa Republican Newspaper. In 1924, the school is replaced by the newly built Fremont Grammar School located on the old Pacific College site. -
Court House School was built "on the road to Sonoma across from George Hood's house" (today, read: Fremont Park) In 1874, the two-story Fourth Street School was built on the same ,site, pushing the old Court House School building to the rear.
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The Southern Pacific Methodists left Vacaville during the Civil War as residents in that city disliked its southern roots. In 1871, they built a college in Santa Rosa, because the governing board felt it would be a "more friendly atmosphere." It stood on College Avenue (named in its honor) where Santa Rosa Junior High was later built. It existed until 1900 when the property was sold. -
Built by the Campbellites in 1872 on a five-acre site on B Street. By1879 it sat empty, the Campbellites having abandoned it. ( Gaye LeBaron,10/21/1979 Press Democrat.) -
Built in1878, it was the pioneer secondary school in the community. -
Two years after it closed, the Christian College on B Street became the western headquarters for the Sisters of the Order of St. Ursula, a "Selected (boarding) School for Girls". They relocated from Brown County, Illinois at the behest of the Rev. John Conway, a pastor of St. Rose Catholic Church. In 1931, the college re-opened as Ursuline High School. In 1958, when a new school was built north of town, the old school building on B Street was demolished. G. LeBaron,10/21/1979 Press Democrat. -
One of the first schools built in Santa Rosa was the one built on Davis and 8th Streets in 1885. Called West School first, Davis Street School second, and
finally Lincoln School. By 1922 it was considered a fire hazard in need of rebuilding and expansion onto what was the Simonnini property. Bonds were sold to provide funding. The new school was designed by W.H. Weeks and opened in September 1923. -
The Burbank School was built on South A Street at Ellis Street in the 1907 and named for Luther Burbank, the popular plant wizard. Only 31 years later in 1938, it was considered a fire trap since children in classrooms on the second and third floors would have to exit using a rickety wood staircase. After a bond measure to build a new school passed, the old school was condemned and torn down in 1940. -
Annexed into the Santa Rosa School District in the 1910, but operating before then. Closed in the 1970s.
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In the Fall of 1924, the new Fremont School structure opened on the old Pacific College site. Property where old school was located becomes Fremont Park in 1931.In 1950, Santa Rosa Junior High, which had opened in the former high school annex building on Humboldt Street 10 years earlier, traded school sites
with Fremont. Fremont on Humboldt was severely
damaged in the 1969 earthquake and closed. It
reopened, in portable buildings, on the same site, in the fall of 1986. -
By the early '50s, Proctor Terrace, Steele Lane
and Doyle Park were built and named for: Walter Proctor, was the developer of Proctor Terrace subdivision, Doyle after Exchange Bank's President Frank Doyle, and Steele Lane honoring the Steele family, whose hop yards were north of Santa Rosa. -
Opened in 1954, the second junior high school in Santa Rosa was named for Herbert Slater a Press Democrat reporter. In 1910, Slater was elected and served two terms as assemblyman and eight terms as state senator. Blinded in a tire-changing accident in 1919, he was known as the "blind senator" and became a champion of the handicapped. As chairman of the Senate Education Committee, he authored landmark public school legislation that earned him the respect of school officials. -
Brook Hill was built in 1961.
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Named for HILLIARD COMSTOCK a lawyer in Santa Rosa who in 1920 was elected to the Santa Rosa Board of Education. In the nine years he served as chairman, Santa Rosa schools annexed 28 rural schools in the surrounding area to the high school district and established Santa Rosa Junior College. In 1929, he resigned from the school board to accept an appointment to the Superior Court. He served Sonoma County justice in that capacity for a record 35 years, much of it as presiding judge.
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HELEN MILLER LEHMAN, whose name graces a
Westside elementary school built in 1969, was the first woman to be so honored. She had great interest in education, particularly in the arts. She was a 16-year member of the Santa Rosa school board, a founding president of the Sonoma County Pen Women, poets and prose writers of the
early 1930s, and a prolific writer. At
the time of her death in 1954, she had published more than 5,000 magazine stories and poems. -
Hidden Valley opened in 1975.
Piner High School - after 1972. -
Gaye LeBaron columns on school names, etc.- The Press Democrat, Jan. 18, 1981, Sept. 18, 1985, Nov. 21, 1993.