The Baptist Seminary

In 1926, the California Preparatory School for Boys (shown below c.1938) was built on the 100-acre H. M. Houser ranch on former Hollenbeck lands southeast of Covina.

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The prep school did well until the onset of WWII, when the ownership, fearing enemy attack (not joking!), moved the entire school to the mountains in Ojai. Consequently, in 1942, the Covina property was sold to the Theosophical Society Point Loma. The south-to-north view below shows the campus in the mid-Forties.

In 1951, the property changed hands again and became the California Baptist Theological Seminary. In this aerial view from c.1955 (below), we're looking generally eastward here; the road to the immediate left of the campus is Covina Hills Road.

Seminary classrooms (left) and one of the dormitories (right). In the early 1960s, that dormitory was also the headquarters of Wally Moon's Baseball Summer Camp. It was the first place I can ever remember sleeping overnight away from home.

The Baptist Seminary conferred its last ministry degrees at Covina in 1974 and moved its central campus to Berkeley. Starting in 1979, the grounds were redeveloped for housing and offices, and almost all of the old buildings were demolished. The gymnasium was initially spared and turned into a racquetball and workout facility, but it was finally torn down in 2005. Today, the only campus structure that remains is the Headmaster's house – Casa Mirasol.