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A group of men – small in number, but large in
stature – stood upon a landlocked mountaintop
and envisioned lowering the hillside to build
a panoramic high school site while raising the
ravine to construct a vital transportation link.
This is the tale of Golden Valley.

Inspired Vision:

Building a Monument to the Community

H ow do you even begin to tell the Golden Valley story? Certainly hundreds of roads and dozens of schools have been

built in the Santa Clarita Valley with little to no fanfare until, of course, the day pavement meets traffic or doors open
to students. Most assuredly there have been negotiations, complications, time restraints, and endless bureaucracy in
other projects in the history of mankind, so what could possibly make the Golden Valley story so unique and worthy of such a
celebrated epic tale?

Simply, all was not golden in the beginning. Unlike other projects, Golden Valley began as a vision – a dream really,
an impossible dream at that – one that was seemingly unachievable for a number of reasons. The most notable being a
mountaintop without access and a school district without funding.
You see, the William S. Hart Union High School District desperately needed a new high school to relieve severe
overcrowding. The number of students significantly exceeded the designed capacity of school facilities. Forty-five percent of
the then-17,000 students in the Hart District were considered “unhoused,” with most occupying temporary facilities. Valencia
High School, which opened in 1994 and built for 1,900 students, witnessed its walls strain as attendance topped 3,000 just a

few years later. Hart, Saugus and Canyon high schools struggled with their own record attendance numbers. The District was
operating in school facility crisis mode.
Relief was not in sight as voters failed to pass two school bond measures that would have provided the Hart District
financial means to move forward on a fifth high school. Since the California Department of Education’s school facility program
required the District to fund half the cost of new construction, options were limited without local bond money.
School overcrowding wasn’t the only woe resulting from the explosive growth happening in and around the City of Santa
Clarita during the 1990s. New families moving into the area outpaced any reasonable attempt to keep up with infrastructure,
including roads. With congested roads and a limited number of main arteries, the City needed to construct a cross-valley
connector roadway traversing the valley floor. Golden Valley Road was no more than a line drawing on a circulation map for

future development and not on the top of the list of possibilities.

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