EST. 1870
CELEBRATING
150 YEARS From hardscrabble, “country academy” roots, how we became a global research university By Andrew Careaga, acareaga@mst.edu
Rolla in 1871 was a rough-hewn, hardscrabble town. It had more taverns than churches, no paved streets, and seemingly “as many dogs, hogs, horses, ducks and geese as humans walking the dusty streets,” writes Larry Gragg, Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor emeritus of history and political science. The town of 1,400 had been a line of defense for the Union Army during the Civil War, which had ended six years earlier. The ravaged nation was still recovering from that conflict. The Rolla of 1871 seemed an unlikely setting for what would become a major research university by the 21st century. Yet it was here, on the site of Fort Dette, the former Union outpost, that the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (MSM) took root. The early years were difficult. Derided by one college president as a “country academy,” MSM was poorly funded, struggling to enroll students, and even opposed at times by the very board that governed it. One early leader of MSM described it as “a forlorn foundling ... despised by the mother institution,” the University of Missouri based 90 miles to the north, in Columbia. Nevertheless, MSM persisted.
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