Brea Olinda Unified School District history

By 1926, Brea-Olinda Union High had begun its slow rise from an eastern barley field.

Built with bricks made of Brea clay, the 23-acre campus was completed within a year and opened to students on September 14, 1927.

In June, the new school proudly sent forth its first 21 graduates as the “Class of 1928.”

Another arrived at decade’s end, as popular BOHS student Bill Griffith raced away with top honors at Southern California’s 1939 soapbox derby.

Former BOHS track star Paul Moore got 1940 off to a running start, setting a world’s record for the ¾ mile on a Stanford track.

Two Army battalions lodged at BOHS during the summer and early fall of 1942, and soldiers studying the mechanics of oil drilling in nearby fields turned its classrooms and gymnasium into barracks and its cafeteria into a mess hall.

Principal Carl Harvey, whose 18-year career stretched back almost to the school’s beginning, left in 1946 and was succeeded by Frank O. Hopkins.

Responding to an idea born in town, Brea Olinda in 1947 became one of the first two high schools in California to implement both driver education and driver training, newly mandated for all 16-year-olds seeking a license.

A decade that thrived on quiet ended instead in excitement, when, in 1959, the school opened a new stadium, pool and boys’ gym, its graduates gained access to a nearby four-year public college (newly opened Cal State Fullerton) and decades of bad football luck finally turned good.

Guiding the high school through this era of change was former teacher/counselor/administrator Gary Goff, who was promoted to principal in 1971.

In 1977, the school celebrated its 50th anniversary in the shadow of an impressive new neighbor---Brea Mall.

BOHS gained its first woman principal, Sue Rainey, in 1980.

Its second, Jeanne Sullivan, signed on in 1986.

Opened at its current campus in 1989, today’s Brea Olinda High has a history far longer than this.

Standing guard at its entry is an updated bronze mascot, the Wildcat, carved in an outdoor studio on campus by Brea’s 1991 Artist in Residence Carlos Terres.

In 1994, BOHS became the first high school in California to connect to the internet, and the campus and its cutting-edge PacBell Knowledge Network were spotlighted in a commercial broadcast during the Super Bowl.