Papa and I went on the University of Arizona Historic Tour this morning. According to our guide, "The University of Arizona was founded in 1885. After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew. The University of Arizona was approved by the Arizona Territory's "Thieving Thirteenth"
Legislature in 1885, which also selected the city of Tucson to receive
the appropriation to build the university. Tucson had hoped to receive
the appropriation for the territory's mental hospital, which carried a
$100,000 allocation instead of the $25,000 allotted to the territory's
only university (Arizona State University was also chartered in 1885,
but at the time it was created as Arizona's normal school, and not a university). Tucson's contingent of legislators was delayed in reaching Prescott due to flooding on the Salt River and by the time they arrived, back-room deals allocating the most
desirable territorial institutions had been made. Tucson was largely
disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize. With
no parties willing to provide land for the new institution, the citizens
of Tucson prepared to return the money to the Territorial Legislature
until local business owners decided to donate the land to
build the school. Construction of Old Main,
the first building on campus, began on October 27, 1887, and classes
met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main. Because there were no high schools in Arizona Territory, the university
maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of
operation."
We walked about the historic buildings on campus, including inside Old Main, where the UA President's office is located and the new UA President stopped by to look at old photographs with us. The old photos are particularly interesting, with the Santa Catalinas in the background, and not much other development. UA is known for many things, but particularly as a research university. It has been awarded more NASA grants for space exploration than any other university nationally. Currently, researchers in the Mirror Lab at UA are working to build the world's most advanced telescope, that will be transported from UA to a permanent mountaintop site in the Chilean Andes. It was all interesting to us!
We walked about the historic buildings on campus, including inside Old Main, where the UA President's office is located and the new UA President stopped by to look at old photographs with us. The old photos are particularly interesting, with the Santa Catalinas in the background, and not much other development. UA is known for many things, but particularly as a research university. It has been awarded more NASA grants for space exploration than any other university nationally. Currently, researchers in the Mirror Lab at UA are working to build the world's most advanced telescope, that will be transported from UA to a permanent mountaintop site in the Chilean Andes. It was all interesting to us!
