St. Helena High School

About this property

Saint Helena High School or more commonly, St. Helena High, is an American public high school located in St. Helena, California in the Napa Valley of California. St. Helena High serves grades 9-12 and is the only source of secondary education in the St. Helena Unified School District. The first "high school" in St. Helena were actually classes held at the local Presbyterian Church for one year in 1895. The next year, the high school had its first official building when it moved into the now defunct Turner Hall in Lyman Park in the center of the town. Classes were held there until 1912. In 1910, Frances Grayson Crane donated land to open a new high school. Construction finished in 1912 and the resulting school, St. Helena High School, was opened. The new building boasted two stories, a laboratory, a wood shop and a basketball court. An auditorium was built adjacent around the 1960s. The stone building was used from 1912 until the 1960s when it was declared earthquake unsafe for students. In 1967, a new building, now known as the 100 Wing was built. Two more wings were built soon after and a new office was constructed in 1975. By then, the 1912 stone building was renamed Vintage Hall, but was no longer used by students. The old stone building underwent a historic restoration and earthquake retrofit, which was completed in 2003. The facility now houses high school space, including a cafeteria on the ground floor. The second floor is used by the St. Helena Unified School District offices, including a state of the art meeting room used by the school board and the St. Helena city council for their sessions. Students use the TV studio located in the meeting room. When all construction was completed, the school had 3 wings, an office, a gym, a baseball field, a football field, track and a pool. In the years following the construction of the new high school, a JV baseball field was built, as well as two Agricultural buildings. The auditorium built in the 1960s was condemned as of 2011-2012, and was demolished. Construction estimates that the new building should be finished in the year 2016. The swimming pool has also been renovated as of 2014, and is now available to students for use. St. Helena High is located near several wineries and vineyards near downtown St. Helena. The school itself is parallel to State Route 29 on the southern end of town. As of the 2015-2016 school year, there are currently 10 AP classes The Saints, as St. Helena is colloquially known, compete in the North Central League 1 in the Coastal Mountain Conference. From the early 1920s until the mid-1960s, St. Helena competed in the North Bay League, regularly facing much larger schools from the greater Fairfield and Sonoma areas. Under coach George Davis (varsity football coach 1960-64), the Saints won 45 consecutive football games in an era when teams played only 9 games in a season. Over this five-year period, the Saints were totally dominant as their offense scored a total of 1,267 points and their defense allowed opponents only 130. This took place before the introduction of section and state championships. St. Helena moved to the North Central League, showing prowess in basketball and in football in the 1970s. St. Helena's success in these two sports was capped by a CIF title in 1977 for football and 3 CIF titles for the basketball teams. However, after the success of their 1977 campaign, the football team began to falter, eventually falling into mediocrity while the basketball team never reached the same kind of success. Volleyball began to become wildly successful at this time, and after numerous league titles, it was decided that after winning the 1982 state volleyball championship, that St. Helena would move to the Superior California Athletic League, colloquially known as the SCAL.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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