Schools

Families living in Easton Addition have access to a pair of excellent public elementary schools: Roosevelt Elementary on Vancouver at Broadway, and Lincoln Elementary on Ray Drive (bordering Ray Park) at Balboa, plus the private Catholic K-8 school, Our Lady of Angels.

Burlingame’s single public middle school, Burlingame Intermediate School, is located just outside of Easton Addition, in the Ray Park neighborhood. Students then go onto Burlingame High School, which has a long history of being recognized as one of the state’s strongest public high schools, or a number of independent and parochial secondary schools.

History

Ansel I. and Adeline Easton’s Black Hawk horse ranch once covered 1,500 acres. The Easton estate, and the 1,500-acre estate of Mrs. Easton’s brother D.O. Mills, occupied all of what is now Burlingame north of Sanchez Creek. The Easton estate extended from Sanchez Creek north to Mills Creek (near present day Adeline Drive) and the Mills estate extended from Mills Creek to El Portal Creek (near present day Mills Avenue).

Today, The Easton Addition takes it name from the Eastons’ son Ansel Mills Easton who subdivided his parents’ ranch and developed the area west of El Camino Real in the decades before and after World War I. The area is referred to as the Easton “Addition” because it was not originally included in the city’s borders when Burlingame incorporated in 1908. We are not sure why Easton didn’t join Burlingame originally at the time of incorporation, but probably because most of the wealthy landowners were worried that they’d be taxed (Mills didn’t join and Hillsborough didn’t join either). The last remaining 25 acres of Black Hawk Ranch were sold to Charles Howard, the owner of the great racehorse Seabiscuit, in 1925.

Ansel Easton Adams, the famous photographer, is named after Ansel M. Easton; the famous photographer’s parents admired Mr. Easton, who was married to Louise Adams Easton, the photographer’s aunt. Ansel Adams (the photographer) was named after his uncle because at one time his father greatly admired his brother-in-law, but the relationship turned very sour later in life after Mr. Adams felt like Ansel didn’t do the right thing in a business deal. When the photographer found out about this he stopped using Easton on photographs (early ones say Ansel Easton Adams), then he went to Ansel E. Adams and finally dropped the E all together.