Video Observer: Admiring Mural Art at Maple Elementary

By Emerson Little on May 10, 2026

At Lemon Park, on a weekday morning in late April, I met with Parks and Recreation Coordinator Aimee Aul, who leads the “Discover Fullerton on Foot” walking tours for the City of Fullerton. We had a conversation about the structures and murals around Maple Elementary’s campus, and discussed how last fall, she was a docent for a historical and mural-focused “Discover Fullerton on Foot” walking tour of the Lemon Park area. Following the same route as the tour, Aul led me on an approximately hour-long walk highlighting the history behind the murals on both the elementary school campus, the bridge above Lemon, and the artwork within the nearby public park.

An environmental mural was painted on the Maple School multipurpose room.

Maple Elementary is one of Fullerton’s oldest schools. Aul showed me a photo of the original structure from 1924. She said, “It was called Maple School because this street (Valencia) used to be Maple…The streets have changed, but the school has remained in this place. The 1924 structure was damaged in the 1933 earthquake, and so that was one of the structures in Fullerton that got on the radar of the federal government for the WPA, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. And so we got a New Deal and a new structure.”

When it first opened, Maple School served the south side of Fullerton, which historically was the only place that a non-white family could rent or own a home in the city. According to Aul, although this housing discrimination was deemed illegal by the Doss v. Bernal case in 1943, it continued in practice for decades.

Aimee Aul in front of historic Maple Elementary School.

“So, by the mid-1960s,” Aul said, “Fullerton had a real segregation problem, which was addressed, to the dismay of just about everybody involved, with one-way busing, and that was very unpopular for a long, long time…The neighborhood didn’t like it, and they wanted to have their own school. It took a long time to reopen. Maple School was closed in 1972. It was still used as a community center and as a headstart program location, but it wasn’t reopened until 1996…then added one class per year until it was fully filled and fully operating as one of our wonderful seventeen Fullerton public schools.”

Maple has since been transformed into an “environmental science and experiential learning” school that is “striving to be at the forefront of environmental education,” according to the Fullerton School District. Fourth through sixth graders now get to go on field trips to places like the Catalina Marine Science Institute and Astrocamp, multi-day experiences they get to have as part of an environmental sciences learning community. These ideas are definitely illustrated in the many murals that can be found across the school’s campus, with nearly all of them representing different global biomes.

Arctic tundra biome mural on the Cahill Library in the Maple Elementary School campus.

Driving down Lemon, it’s easy to spot a red-orange hued mural painted on the side of one Maple school building, depicting a southwest desert biome with saguaro cacti, jagged plateaus and desert wildlife coexisting. However, many of the other biome-themed murals can only be viewed within the school’s gated campus.

Fortunately, I was able to obtain permission from the school’s administrators and was allowed to photograph the Maple School murals on the same Saturday that the group Love Fullerton was hosting a volunteer-led event on the campus.

Ocean landscape mural painted on the historic Maple School building 1.

On the back of a building facing East Valencia Drive, there’s a long mural showcasing an ocean ecosystem. The entire wall facing the school’s cafeteria benches is painted in various shades of blue to reflect the underwater landscape. Facing the ball courts area, there are four murals painted on different buildings: two unique forest landscapes with walls painted green, one reddish sub-Saharan desert biome, and one purple tundra.

“Apparently, it was a group of artists under the direction of a commercial sign painting company [that made these murals],” said Aul. “But it is all hand-painted, and custom-designed for this site.”

Near the corner of a Maple Elementary building facing the intersection of Valencia Drive and Lemon Street, there is a stunning three-part mosaic created by Fullerton School District students under the direction of guest artist Katherine England, who is well known in the community for her mosaics and devotes countless hours to the All the Arts for All the Kids Foundation.

Murals on the Maple school campus.

“This mural was made in an after-school program. The flowers were designed by the children at Maple school, and the panels on either side are filled with bugs, animals and flowers that were made over several days by representatives from all the classrooms of Maple school, along with Fullerton firefighters,” said Aul. “So it’s a truly collaborative artwork. I especially love how Katherine used the repeating motif of black and white to sort of echo the vertical lines in the architecture. It’s an example of an art piece really working with the building.”

Lastly, while standing on the stairs to the bridge that crosses Lemon, we discussed a mural from 1998, titled “La Mujer Latina” by artist Emigdio Vasquez Sr., which can be seen from the elementary school’s sports field. It is found on the school-facing side of the stairs leading up to the bridge over Lemon.

Southwest desert biome mural on the side of the Maple Elementary school building visible from Lemon.

Aul said, “It replaces an earlier mural that was sort of an Aztec design faded by the sun. This mural has had some damage too, but it shows the strong women throughout Mexican and Mexican-American history…in sort of an upward march through history on the side of this wall.”

On Saturday, May 16, Aimee Aul will be coordinating with another school to lead a “Discover Fullerton on Foot” walking tour focused on the historic buildings and murals of Fullerton Union High School’s campus.

Discover Fullerton on Foot tours are free to the public, and happen every third Saturday of the month, beginning at 8:30am and lasting until 10 or 10:30am at different places throughout the city.