The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part 5: Olinda School, 1910s

Because it was located in a district that had extraordinary tax revenues from a booming oil field, Olinda School may have been the best-funded elementary through junior high school in the region.

For the Gaines and Brown families, whose descendant Joyce Harrington has shared many of the family photos, this meant a quality education outside of the established cities in northern Orange County like Fullerton and Anaheim.

When it came to going to high school, Olinda students would make the long bus ride to Fullerton Union High School, which gave a good education, just not with the tax revenues of Olinda!

It seemed particularly appropriate at this point, as our schools have completed their year and students are headed for their summer vacations, including some who have graduated, to post a couple of the images provided by Joyce of the Olinda School.

The facility was located near the banks of Carbon [Canyon] Creek after it flowed out of Carbon Canyon, past the confluence with Soquel Canyon and its creek and headed into what is now Carbon Canyon Regional Park.

The Olinda School, located in what is now the eastern end of Carbon Canyon Regional Park, from a circa 1910s photograph provided courtesy of Joyce Harrington.

Those familiar with the old park entrance, near which is a state historic landmark plaque for the Olinda community, will recognize in one of the photos the steep hill behind the school, which is above the park's eastern edge and where housing tracts in Yorba Linda overlook the park just to the west of today's Diemer water treatment plant operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

At the left of the image, behind a small tree is the covered projecting entrance of the school, situated under a bell tower with arched openings.  Again, this is pretty fancy school for such a rural area.

The other photo shows the graduating 8th grade class of 1917, exactly a century ago, posed on the front steps of the Olinda School.  As with almost all school photos, it is fun to see the varied dress and expressions of the students, some with broad smiles and others are serious, while a few students look away from the camera.  At the bottom left is the mark of Hartsook, a major photography studio with offices in Los Angeles and Oakland.

The 8th grade graduating class of 1917 at the Olinda School.  Courtesy of Joyce Harrington.

The Olinda School operated well after the post-World War II period, even as the residential population of the oil fields diminished significantly from the late 1920s onward, with the rise of the automobile allowing oil field workers to live further from their job site.  When the Carbon Canyon Dam project was completed in the late 1950s, the school was razed.

The name of Olinda School, however, was revived when the Olinda Village subdivision was built further east where the Gaines' Flying Cow Ranch was located.  Olinda Elementary School opened in the mid-1960s and operated until recent years, when new housing at Olinda Ranch and projecting subdivisions in the shuttered oil fields north of Lambert and west of Valencia prompted the move of the school to its current location on Birch Street.

Thanks to photos like the ones provided by Joyce, we can document the existence and usage of the original Olinda School.

New Olinda Elementary School Opens

After $30 million for the acquisition of the land ($8 million) from Chevron and construction ($22 million,) which began in October 2010, Olinda Elementary School has opened at its new site on Birch Avenue next to the Brea Sports Park after almost a half-century at its Olinda Village location in Carbon Canyon.

Classes began in the new facility last Monday, the 9th for 400 students, faculty and staff, although there is still further construction to do within the next couple of years and the expected peak occupancy looks to be about 450 students.

The first Olinda School, described as a prototypical one-room schoolhouse, opened in 1898 to serve children of men working in the newly-opened Olinda Oil Field.  As the community grew, a new school was opened in 1909 and operated for several decades until the diminishing oil field production and population led to its closure.

With the creation of the Olinda Village housing subdivision on the ranch formerly owned by Edward F. Gaines, a reconstituted Olinda Elementary School opened in 1964 and was a high-performing and close-knit campus.  Because of new housing in the area, such as at Olinda Ranch and the newly opened Blackstone subdivision, the Brea-Olinda Unified School District decided to relocate the school to a larger campus on former oil property.

For an article by the Orange County Register on the opening last week, click here.

As to the future of the shuttered school at Olinda Village, it is considered surplus property and the district can either readapt it to a compatible educational use, lease it or sell it.  A 7 November public hearing was conducted for public comment about the property, but, given its "remote" location, it seems unlikely to be used by the district for educational purposes and it also seems unlikely that there would be a lease opportunity, especially because the age of the campus would be an issue in either of the above cases.  More likely, the district will look to sell the property for the obvious reason of needed funds.  What also seems certain is that developers will be more than slightly interested in the land for housing.  Certainly, there will be news at some point of what the district's plans are regarding the site. 

Here is the flyer announcing the meeting with some information about the district's process in dealing with the property.

More information and photos concerning the new campus is available here on the district's Web site.