Ione Academy (Ione High School), Ione - Amador County

The first high school in Amador county was erected in 1903, and Logan shows that school on page 248 ­dominated by its tall bell tower. It was located where the new main building of lone high is now. But that first high school was not a public-supported school within a legally defined district. It was a private academy at first, and it charged $5 a month tuition. According to various sources, the lone academy was incorporated on August 28, 1901, "to acquire and dispose of real and personal property, construct, equip and maintain buildings for educational purposes, and to conduct a school, academy and college in all their branches.... " The five directors, who each purchased $20 or one share of the corporation's capital stock, were A.L. Adams, L.A. Frary, David McCall, E.W. Perkins and Mrs.John Touhey.

Though the academy only had $100 of $5,000 authorized stock sold at incorporation, it obviously sold several hundred dollars worth more and used the money to construct the frame, two-story, bell-towered school, costing $2,287. It was built, says its plaque, in 1903, or "during the Academy's second year and completed late in the year." Before it was completed, the academy utilized the Baptist church. In February, 1903, the corporation purchased, for just $10 gold coin, from the Ione coal and iron company, owners of the Arroyo Seco grant, the property for the academy west and north of the Catholic church and cemetery. But it wasn't until 1909, deeds show, that the lone union high school district, itself formed in 1906, purchased the academy schoolhouse from the corporation for $3,700.

Sometime prior to 1923 the school district added an easterly wing to the high school building nee academy.... In 1939, for unknown reasons, the upper story and bell tower of the building were removed and the building became the school's auditorium.

Prior to November 26, 1972, it housed two class­rooms and a counseling office. But on that date fire destroyed the school. District taxpayers in 1973 overwhelmingly approved a half million dollar bond issue to, among various projects, replace the building burned down.

It was completed in January, 1975, and appears somewhat like the building that burned .... Today, the building houses the school's business and math departments, and, downstairs, the library, textbook corner and reading lab. For 75 years this year (1978) the academy or high school has stood on property bought from the grant on February 24, 1903.

Students from Jackson and Sutter Creek also utilized the railway to go back and forth to school at the Ione Academy, then being the only high school in Amador County.

Return to our Ione Tour or click on our Miner to end the tour

Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, The Chronicling America Database, and Larry Cenotto, Amador County's Historian