Placer High School

Placer High School is a public high school located in Auburn, California, United States, and is part of the Placer Union High School District. Auburn is located northeast of Sacramento, California, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. History History, 1882 to 1906 Placer High School’s origins can be traced back to 1882 when three young men from the East Coast arrived in Auburn with a dream of creating a college for Northern California. The trio met with influential members of the community in the Placer County Courthouse and began a campaign to solicit donations to the building fund of the Sierra Normal College and Business Institute. When the contributions reached $6,000, the three young teachers, M.L. Fries, A.W. Sutphen, and M.W. Ward contributed $1500 each and began to search for a building site. General Jo Hamilton, a former Attorney General for the State of California during the 1870s, had retired to Auburn by this time and built a home on an estate at the corner of what is now High Street and College Way. He donated a parcel of his land to the newly formed school. By 1883 Sierra Normal College was advertised in the Placer Argus newspaper as “the only independent normal college on the Pacific Coast.” Normal in this instance meant preliminary, professional education of teachers.