Originally built in 1897, the little red Lagunita Schoolhouse was located on San Juan Grade Road facing Sugar Loaf Mountain, on the northern outskirts of Salinas. Truly a piece of Americana, the same little one-room schoolhouse served as the learning ground for children from grades 1-8 until 1967, when the building was declared unsafe.
The school was replaced with a larger, similar-looking structure built on the same floorplan, and the original building was moved to the Boronda History Center in October 1986 and completely restored by October 1988. Unfortunately, the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 damaged two of our barns used for large artifact storage thus necessitating the school to be used as collections storage until 2011.
The Monterey County Historical Society has restored and preserved the building to what it was in its prime. It is now a museum depicting school life in a turn of the century one-room schoolhouse, a visible recreation of Monterey County’s heritage.
Another historical fact–the Lagunita Schoolhouse is the one John Steinbeck writes about in Red Pony.
