F E AT U R E S TO RY
UCM at 150 T
By Kathy Strickland
To celebrate its first 50 years in 1921, the university held its first homecoming parade.
In honor of the centennial in 1971, a commemorative book was published, and students made a time capsule, which they buried in a cement vault, to be opened May 23, 2071.
This year the university has published a sesquicentennial book and hosted a variety of historical events and exhibits. Learn more in the following pages about what was happening around each of UCM’s 50-year milestones.
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1871 on Campus The same year the Great Chicago Fire destroyed about 2,000 acres of the city, displacing more than 100,000 residents, State Normal School No. 2 was just beginning to build its campus on 20 acres of land donated by Civil War veteran Capt. Melville U. Foster.
1871
he year 2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the University of Central Missouri.
The cornerstone was laid August 16, 1871, for the first campus building, to be known as Old Main. Although the bottom floor was ready for use the next fall, with four classrooms and an unfinished assembly area, it took until 1882 to complete the four-story building. Old Main would serve as the hub of Normal until the campus suffered its own devastating fire in 1915, which only Dockery and the Industrial Arts Building survived. Historical Snapshot As the United States reunited after the Civil War, a period of industrialization and exploration began. Railroad track mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, with Warrensburg — and a side trip to Pertle Springs Resort — being a central stop for travelers and those migrating west. The first Transcontinental Railroad had opened two years earlier, expanding the West to ranching and coal mining, as well as geological surveys of areas like Yellowstone National Park, which opened in 1872. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, prohibited states and the federal government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
Fall 2021 | www.ucmfoundation.org/magazine
President George P. Beard (1871-72)
Campus site, 1867
Old Main, completed 1882
Plate donated by Janet Sloan from the estate of her grandmother, Edith Donath, ’50
