The University of Arizona: From Territorial Legislation to Agricultural and Mining Education

Territorial Act No. 99, approved on March 12, 1885, provided for the University of Arizona in or near Tucson in Pima County. Its purposes included literature, science, and the arts, rather than vocational training alone. A 1966 report on higher education in Arizona identifies legislator Selim Franklin as a promoter of the founding bill and places the decision against a background of longstanding shortages of territorial funding for higher education.

Legislation did not immediately create classrooms. The first university catalogue records acceptance of donated land outside Tucson and a building contract signed in October 1887 for $37,969. Lack of funds to complete construction delayed opening to students until autumn 1891. Thus, 1885 marks statutory establishment, while 1891 marks the beginning of actual teaching.

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The founding act authorized up to $25,000 in bonds backed by the territory, paying 7 percent annual interest and repayable within twenty years. This was not an unconditional grant available for immediate spending: Pima County, Tucson, or donors acting on their behalf first had to transfer at least forty suitable acres free of encumbrances. Bond sales also required notices in newspapers in New York, San Francisco, the territorial capital, and Tucson, and bonds could not sell below 95 percent of face value.

The law placed the institution under a board of regents authorized to appoint teachers, set salaries and courses, and purchase books, instruments, and natural-history and mineral specimens. The board had to report income, expenditure, and staff and student numbers to the territorial governor. Sectarian beliefs could not determine eligibility to enroll or teach. These provisions connected construction funding, academic organization, and public accountability.

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The 1892 catalogue distinguished funding by purpose. The agricultural experiment station received a supplemental appropriation of $10,000 in 1890, followed by annual research funds. A separate teaching appropriation came through the supplementary Morrill Act of 1890, with the university recording receipts of $15,000, $16,000, and $17,000 in 1890, 1891, and 1892 respectively. Territorial money supported buildings, while federal funds mainly covered equipment, teaching, and research. Their permitted uses differed.

The founding act listed five departments, but early income was insufficient to open them all. The regents began with the two schools most closely connected to local agriculture and mining, while the territorial normal school in Tempe already provided teacher training. Frank Gulley headed the School of Agriculture and directed the experiment station; Theodore Comstock headed the School of Mines. The school heads formed a university deliberative body, coordinating shared courses to avoid duplicating appointments.

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The first catalogue listed six first-year students, three special students, and twenty-two preparatory students, including both men and women. Most came from Tucson, with others from elsewhere in the territory or from other states. Preparatory students substantially outnumbered regular first-year students, showing that the new university also had to supply preparation for admission. Preparatory instruction covered arithmetic, English, history, and drawing, aiming to lead students into the existing technical courses rather than provide a complete general elementary education.

Applicants to the university’s first year had to be at least sixteen, sit examinations in algebra, arithmetic, geography, grammar, and American history, and write a short composition in English. The preparatory minimum age was fifteen. Tuition was free, but there was a one-time registration fee of $5 and separate charges for laboratory materials. Buildings accommodated only a small number of boarders, with room and board charged at cost. Free tuition therefore did not mean studying was without expense.

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Both schools combined general subjects with local problems in their curricula. Agricultural study began with English, algebra, and botany, then added soil chemistry, entomology, irrigation hydraulics, and laws relating to farmland. The engineering track included further work on surveying, canals, and reservoirs. Mining students studied chemical analysis and treated ores in an experimental plant, recording results step by step. The catalogue also scheduled summer field training in geology, surveying, and mining.

These curricula described instructional arrangements; they do not establish that the first year already produced graduates at every level. The agricultural experiment station, by contrast, had concrete work underway. At campus plots and experimental sites in Phoenix, near Tempe, and near Yuma, researchers who also taught investigated soils, water, plants, and insect pests. Findings supplied classroom demonstrations, while bulletins were mailed free to applicants, connecting research with farmers’ practical problems.

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The School of Mines’ Bulletin No. 2 of 1892 recorded receipt and preliminary examination of about sixty lots of ore. Free services were limited to identifying minerals and determining whether constituents such as gold, silver, or copper were present. They did not provide metal content or guarantee the location, extent, or value of deposits for those submitting samples. Quantitative assays, sampling, and ore-dressing or metallurgical trials had separate charges. To avoid undercutting local assayers’ livelihoods, routine assays were even priced above market rates.

The bulletin also recorded inquiries from manufacturers, museums, geological surveys, and exposition bodies. Evening lectures were still soliciting registrations, with their provision dependent on confirmed demand. Knowledge exchange at the new university thus took concrete form: students received training, local samples entered laboratories, and test results and bulletins returned to miners and farmers.

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