Blackford High School: 1961-1991

Because “forever” is a short amount of time.

The Baby Boom was in full swing on September 5, 1961, when the bells first rang at the brand-new Blackford High. It was an era when it seemed they couldn’t put up new schools fast enough, especially in sun-belt regions heavy with defense and aerospace industry. The space-age overhang at the entrance—right out of The Jetsons—was the only feature that distinguished BHS from the eight other campuses in the Campbell Union High School District, or from hundreds of others throughout California.

By 1968, our graduating class was bursting with 432 students and the total enrollment neared the 2,000 mark.

But by the late 1980s, everything had changed. Birth rates had been dropping for a good twenty years and more and more parents were choosing to send their children to private schools. Blackford’s enrollment had plummeted by half and more. The board of trustees declared the school redundant, irrelevant. The last seniors marched across the quad to receive diplomas bearing the Blackford High School name in June of 1991.

Various private schools and community organizations rented out portions of the old BHS campus until 2005, when the private and pricey Harker School leased the entire place to repurpose as a middle school. Today, the tween offspring of Silicon Valley’s elite walk the halls that we once trod.