Shaping early Alpine

DISTRICT’S FIRST TEACHER LEFT HER MARK ON REGION

 In 1875, Emma G. Everhart became the first teacher of the newly established Alpine School District, teaching children at the George Wash­ington Webb Ranch near what is now Harbison Canyon Road. Her brief tenure placed her at the beginning of Alpine’s public-school history and connected her to one of the community’s earliest families.

The school district was formed that year in a large, sparsely populated area that had previ­ously been part of the Cajon School District. Ever­hart taught at the Webb Ranch, where George Washington Webb and his wife, Nellie, had estab­lished their home and raised their family.

George Webb was already an important fig­ure in the area’s development. In 1871, he and 17 other men graded the San Diego-Julian Toll Road, helping establish a route through the re­gion. The Webb family later built what the Alpine Historical Society identifies as the community’s first schoolhouse on their ranch.

The school initially served the Webb children and other youngsters living nearby. With the cre­ation of the Alpine School District, Everhart be­came its first teacher.

Her time in Alpine also coincided with one of the area’s most unusual early incidents.

According to the Alpine Historical Society, in 1875, while Everhart was teaching at the Webb Ranch, George Webb’s son Warren became in­volved in the killing of a French sheepherder. Warren Webb was charged in the case and ul­timately exonerated, according to the historical society’s account.

Everhart’s connection with Alpine is particu­larly interesting because the community’s first school was not an institution in the modern sense. The district covered a wide rural area, and children lived on scattered ranches and home steads. Getting an education meant bringing to­gether families who were separated by distance and rough roads.

The decision to establish a school district re­flected the growing importance of education as more settlers made the area their home. Ever­hart’s role was therefore more than simply teach­ ing a classroom of children. She was part of the first effort to cre­ate an organized public school in what was still a developing community.

Everhart eventually left teaching behind. The Alpine Historical Society reports she later became a successful mil­liner in downtown San Diego, where she operated several stores. Her life thus connected Alpine’s early rural community with San Diego’s developing commercial center.

A surviving San Diego record also places Everhart in the city during this period. The San Di­ego History Center’s collection of New San Diego Hotel regis­ters lists Emma Everhart as a guest on April 25, 1875, the same year she was teaching in Alpine. Additional entries place her at the hotel in later years.

Everhart’s time as Alpine’s first teacher did not last long. The school at the Webb Ranch was discontinued at the end of the 1876 school year. In 1877, classes resumed in a lean-to at­tached to the Edward A. Foss home on Foss Ranch. That building served as Alpine’s school for several years.

The school district eventu­ally grew as Alpine’s population increased, but its beginnings were modest: a ranch, a small number of children and a young teacher taking on the job of edu­cating them.

Emma Everhart’s name may not be as familiar as some of the area’s early settlers, but as the first teacher at the Al­pine School District, she holds a documented place in the com­munity’s history.