PLACERVILLE — As students across El Dorado County settle into another school year, it is easy to think of education as something measured in classrooms, buses, football fields, and bell schedules.
But in Placerville, the story of public education reaches back far beyond the modern school campus.
Long before El Dorado High School became a familiar landmark on Canal Street, young people came to Placerville to attend an ambitious private academy established during the early years of California statehood.
That school was the Conklin Academy.
A school ahead of its time
In 1861, Edward Barber Conklin and his wife, both educators trained in New York, established the academy in Placerville. According to the El Dorado County Historical Society, the school was initially located on Bedford Avenue and developed a reputation for high academic standards.
Its reach extended well beyond Placerville. Students came from considerable distances, including Utah, making the academy an early regional center for education in the Sierra foothills.
Among its students was Mollie Carpenter, who later became editor of the Mountain Democrat, connecting the academy to one of Placerville’s enduring institutions of local journalism.
The school’s faculty also included a young literature teacher named Edwin Markham.
Markham would eventually become El Dorado County superintendent of schools and later gain national recognition as a poet. His poem The Man with the Hoe brought him national attention, and in 1922 he read his poem Lincoln, the Man of the People at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Today, his name remains familiar to Placerville students through Edwin Markham Middle School.
From academy to high school
The Conklins operated their original academy for seven years before leaving Placerville.
They returned in 1871 and established another school in the Upper Central House, a substantial early hotel at Main and Clay streets. The building had been constructed in 1864 and was originally operated as the Central House. The City of Placerville’s historical documentation identifies the structure as the Upper Central House and later the Ivy House.
The second incarnation of the academy continued the Conklins’ educational work.
A contemporary account published in the California Teacher in July 1871 welcomed Conklin’s return to Placerville, describing him as an experienced educator with
“scholarship, the love for teaching and the long experience in the school room.”
Eventually, Professor George P. Tyndall, a former University of Michigan instructor, took over the school.
Tyndall expanded the facilities and grounds, including gardens, and under his leadership the institution was reorganized as Placerville’s first high school, with E.B. Potter serving as principal, according to the El Dorado County Historical Society.
That transition is an important part of the story because today’s El Dorado High School did not simply appear in 1928. Its educational lineage reaches back through the private academies of the 19th century and the development of a countywide high school system.
The 1915 connection
By the early 20th century, the institution was being identified as El Dorado County High School.
A 1916 U.S. Bureau of Education publication listing accredited secondary schools specifically identifies “Placerville—El Dorado County High School.”
Historical postcards also document the El Dorado County High School campus on Clay Street during this period. A 1915 postcard shows the school and the steep stairway leading up from Clay Street. The steps were already being remembered as “72 steps,” although the exact number has long been a matter of local lore.
The steps became part of the school’s identity.
For generations of students, reaching the school meant making the climb up the hillside. Whether the staircase actually contained 72 steps or somewhat fewer became less important than what the number represented: the daily uphill trek to school.
The Ivy House chapter
While the school continued evolving, the old academy building acquired an entirely different identity.
The Upper Central House eventually became known as the Ivy House, named for the ivy that covered the structure.
The building passed through private ownership and eventually became a hotel. John A. Raffetto Sr. purchased the Ivy House in 1895 and operated it successfully as a hotel. A biographical account describes the property as a 50-room hotel with a large dining hall and notes that it had previously been Conklin Academy, one of the state’s early boarding schools.
The building remained a Placerville landmark for decades.
The City of Placerville’s environmental documentation records the structure as serving as the Placerville Academy from 1871 to 1894 and subsequently operating as the Ivy House Hotel. The city notes that the building was demolished in the 1960s, and the site is now associated with the Ivy House parking lot.
The school had moved on.
The building had become a hotel.
But the educational legacy remained.
El Dorado High comes of age
The next major chapter came in 1928, when El Dorado High School was established at its present Canal Street location.
The El Dorado Union High School District’s facilities history states that the original 1928 building at 561 Canal St. was designed to accommodate approximately 300 students. The school was expanded in 1939, followed by a major expansion in the late 1950s that added facilities for industrial arts, science, athletics, business and performing arts.
The original brick main building became one of Placerville’s recognizable school landmarks.
But it did not survive into the modern era.
According to the district’s facilities master plan, the main brick building that had served the school since 1928 was demolished and replaced in 1974 with a 35,000-square-foot building containing administration, counseling, library and classroom space.
That distinction is worth making when discussing the history of El Dorado High: the school itself has a much older lineage than the present physical campus, and the 1928 building is itself now part of Placerville’s educational history.
A countywide school
For much of the 20th century, El Dorado County High School served as a central educational destination for students from communities far beyond Placerville.
Accounts of county life recall students traveling from throughout El Dorado County to attend high school in Placerville. As additional high schools eventually opened in other parts of the county, the role of the Placerville school changed from being the county’s singular high-school destination to one of several comprehensive high schools.
The old countywide role nevertheless helps explain why the school became such a powerful institution in local memory.
It was more than a school.
It was where generations of young people from different corners of El Dorado County came together.
What remains
Today, El Dorado High School continues to operate at 561 Canal St. as part of the El Dorado Union High School District. The California Department of Education lists the school as an active public high school serving grades nine through 12.
El Dorado High School — official site
But the history beneath the modern campus is considerably older than the buildings students see today.
It begins with two educators from New York who came to Placerville in 1861 and established a boarding academy.
It passes through Conklin Academy, Placerville Academy, the Upper Central House, the Ivy House, El Dorado County High School and the 1928 Canal Street campus.
Along the way came students such as Mollie Carpenter and educators such as Edwin Markham — people whose own lives became part of El Dorado County’s history.
That is why the beginning of another school year is also a fitting time to look backward.
Every generation of students thinks its school days are unique.
In Placerville, they are.
But they are also part of a school story that began 165 years ago.
And somewhere beneath the modern classrooms, athletic fields and school buses is the memory of an academy where a young teacher named Edwin Markham once taught literature — and where El Dorado County’s long educational tradition was taking shape.
Historical note: Some commonly repeated details about the old schools — including the precise number of the famous steps, the exact reason for demolition of the 1928 building and claims about the original auditorium — are not established by the strongest primary sources located for this article. Those details have therefore been treated cautiously rather than presented as established fact.
