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History of Sonoma Valley High School
Sonoma's first high school used the three-story Cumberland College building located on Broadway behind what is now Sonoma Motors. During the eight years of its existence, the college flourished and had at one time as many as 400 students, mostly from other parts of California and nearby states. It was closed when the State University opened at Berkeley.
Sonoma Valley Union High had its first commencement in 1894, graduating two students. The Principal from 1897 to 1901 was Benjamin Weed. San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake tumbled buildings in Sonoma, among them the high school. Students attended classes in a church basement and the upstairs of Clewe’s store on the corner of Broadway and Napa, until a new school was built on the foundation of the old Cumberland College. Classes, varying in size from three to more than a dozen continued in this building (the shell still remains) until 1922, when the “main building” was opened on our present site.
By 1952 the school population had grown to over 400, when a series of major changes began. In the spring of 1953, construction was started on the Home Economics building and the shop building. That autumn when school opened, the majority of classes were held in these two buildings, due to the necessity of strengthening the main building. Since then the school has grown to what we now know, with over 1,600 students.
