San Mateo High School
high school in California, United States
San Mateo High School is a National Blue Ribbon comprehensive four-year public high school in San Mateo, California, United States. It serves grades 9–12 and is one of the seven San Mateo Union High School District public high schools.
History
San Mateo High School opened on September 15, 1902, in the Dixon Cottage on Ellsworth Avenue with 14 students and a faculty of three. Early courses included foreign languages, the arts, history, science, and mathematics, and initially only two years were required for graduation, though many students completed four years in preparation for college.
Following the example of Princeton University, the school adopted orange and black as its colors and set its own school song to the music of Princeton's alma mater. In 1903, increasing enrollment prompted a move to a larger building on Baldwin Avenue, for $24,000 previously Saint Margaret's School for Girls. During the summer, in addition to remodeling and refurnishing the building, a new chemistry laboratory was constructed and supplied at a cost of $270. SMHS also gained a set of reference books at $75 and three Remington typewriters at $70 each. Classes were conducted in this building from 1903 until 1911. Despite substantial damage from the 1906 earthquake, classes were not interrupted, and the building was quickly repaired.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “San Mateo High School” as high school in California, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as high school in California, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7414915. Authority coordinates are 37.577, -122.330. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1902, 1903, 1911 and 1906.
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This entry incorporates text from “San Mateo High School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.