Monterey Bay Academy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Monterey Bay Academy is a Seventh-day Adventist, co-educational boarding high school, located on San Andreas Road, in La Selva Beach, California.

The location was the original site of Camp McQuaide, which was the designated Coast Artillery Training Center during World War II and became the official stockade for stateside army AWOLs. Ten years after it was established, Camp McQuaide was decommissioned and considered surplus.

The government offered to sell the property to Santa Cruz County for a mere $1 for the development of a junior college, and later the property was offered to the State Division of Parks to be the site of a state park. Both offers fell through however. In 1948 the Seventh-day Adventist Church acquired the property. The cost, contrary to popular church tradition, was no money paid. Not even the discount price of $1 the government had asked of Santa Cruz County previously. According to a War Assets Administration document the property was purchased at no cost.

Since 1949, Monterey Bay Academy has served as a place of learning for more than 8,000 students, with 95% of those students going on to college and a variety of careers.

Monterey Bay Academy Airport is located on the Campus of Monterey Bay Academy. During his visit to Santa Cruz in 1989, the Dalai Lama landed at this airport.