The institution was founded in 1929 as a department of Antelope Valley Joint Union High School in Lancaster. The average daily attendance at the college was 13, during the 1929-30 school year.

There was little growth in enrollment at the college during the depression years that followed. Alfalfa farmers in Antelope Valley were hard hit during the 1930s, and the smallest junior college in California suffered serious financial difficulties. Teachers took a 20 percent cut in salaries, which ranged from a state-mandated minimum of $1,350 a year to a $1,595 maximum.

Average daily attendance (ADA) at the college reached 100 by 1939, but with World War II, attendance plummeted. Attendance reached a low of 13 during the war, the same ADA as the year the school was founded.

There were pressures to close the junior college, but trustees and staff held out until the vets returned from the war. Enrollment grew steadily during the postwar years, partly because of the GI Bill of Rights and partly because Antelope Valley began developing an aircraft industry.

In 1959 groundbreaking was held for a new college campus on 110 acres at Avenue K and 30th Street West.

The college has expanded the campus size to approximately 125 acres through land purchases. While some of that land is still undeveloped, that is expected to change with projected growth.