Albuquerque Academy

Albuquerque Academy was founded in 1955 as The Academy for Boys in the basement of a small Albuquerque church by William B. S. Wilburn. The school was eventually moved into a facility that is today used by Sandia Preparatory School. In 1965, the school moved to its current site in northeast Albuquerque.

Between 1957 and 1964, the academy received a large tract of undeveloped land north of Albuquerque, part of the Elena Gallegos Land Grant, from the Albert G. Simms family. The western portion (from Wyoming Boulevard to the Rio Grande) was sold to finance the creation of the current campus and the first endowment fund, and the present campus was created in the middle of the tract. The land east of the campus, reaching the crest of the Sandia Mountains, was sold later in a series of deals. First, the section from the campus to Juan Tabo Boulevard was sold to create a second trust. Later, the City of Albuquerque attempted to facilitate a deal to sell the remainder to the Bureau of Land Management by putting up a parking garage as collateral. The deal fell through, and the academy became the garage owner while still retaining the area.

In July 1982, the city purchased most of the land in a complex deal with the academy and the US Forest Service. The City paid the academy $23.9 million, raised by a bond issue supported by a temporary ¼ percent sales tax. The City retained part of the land, which is now the 640-acre (260 ha) Elena Gallegos Picnic Area/Albert G. Simms Park, located at the feet of the Sandias at the mouths of Bear and Pino Canyons. The 7,000-acre (2,800 ha) plus remainder of the purchase, most of it forest land in the canyons proper, was sold to the Forest Service and is now part of the Cibola National Forest and the Sandia Mountain Wilderness. The academy retained two parts of the tract, the larger adjoining Tramway Boulevard. The school set up the High Desert Investment Corporation (HDIC) to develop this portion as the master-planned community known as High Desert. (The smaller portion, within Bear Canyon itself, is still used by the academy for experiential education purposes.) HDIC then purchased a large tract of land in the northern section of Rio Rancho, developed as Mariposa.

The school remained an all-boys school, with grades five through 12, until 1973, at which time girls were allowed into grades nine through 12. Part of the reason for the delay in allowing girls and for the gradual inclusion was that the Simms grant specified that the number of boys not decrease in order to make room for girls. The fifth grade was dropped in 1979, and the school became fully coeducational in 1984.