CU Boulder was almost built somewhere else — one reporter captured how it all began

When the University of Colorado was founded in 1876, newspaper reporter Amos Bixby was on the scene. What he found was the University Building (now called Old Main) alone on a barren mesa facing downtown Boulder.

Several years later, and after Bixby’s death, then-Professor J. Raymond Brackett eloquently wrote up the reporter’s comments in an essay titled, “Little Journeys in the Year One.”

“Amos Bixby had visions of the coming loveliness of Boulder Valley and wrote them up for his newspaper,” stated Brackett. “He also had dreams for the new university before there was one, and after the building was located, he made little journeys to the site, inspiring those who had an eye for the future and encouraging those who were disheartened.”

Now, in the university’s 150th anniversary year, Bixby’s “Little Journeys” take us back in time.

Even earlier, in 1861, a bill was introduced in the then-new Colorado Territorial Legislature to establish a public university. By 1872, there was talk of locating it in Denver, Colorado Springs or Greeley, but Boulder wanted it too, prompting three Boulder residents to donate a total of 52 acres of land.

Then money was needed for a building. In 1874, the territorial legislature agreed to provide matching funds of $15,000 that had been raised by Boulder residents. In 1876 — the year of Colorado statehood — the construction of the University Building was underway.

The year 1876 also marked the formal founding of CU. At the time, Boulder was a small city of approximately 3,000 residents. Frame buildings on Pearl Street were slowly being replaced by new ones of brick and stone, adding an air of permanence to the former frontier town.

CU’s future was less secure. During the University Building’s construction, its original slate roof was so heavy that cracks developed in the walls. The university’s opening was delayed while the walls were reinforced with iron rods and the slate roof was replaced with shingles.

Finally, in July 1877, the building was declared safe. Two months later, on Sept. 5, 1877, CU opened its doors to a handful of students.

Bixby was there that day, too. The university’s bell had not yet been hoisted into the building’s bell tower, but it was rung from what he called “its place of humility” on the building’s stone steps. A brass band played, “We Hail Thee! Great Fountain of Learning and Light.”

Accompanying the band were three companies of firemen in brilliantly colored uniforms, members of the Columbia Lodge of Masons, and distinguished guests from Denver. Also, there were crowds of men, women and children from Boulder. Bixby called them “a cloud of witnesses from the surrounding country.”

Joseph Sewall was the university’s first president. In his oration, Sewall spoke of his hopes for the future, especially its soul. He warned against “judging the university on its body any more than judging a man on his form,” adding that “the real test of the university, like that of man, would be its character.” He spoke of the need for “honor, fidelity and stainless integrity.”

One guest reportedly was so pessimistic that he said of Sewall, “He must either fail or be God. He has got to make something out of nothing.”

Bixby’s next little journey was “to see exactly what was going on.” At the time, the University Building included all classrooms, a dining room and kitchen, the library, and living quarters for President Sewall and his family. In attendance were 66 students, both men and women. All were high school students. There were no college students at all!

At first, President Sewall and fellow professor Justin Dow were the only teachers. Mary Rippon, the third instructor and the first female, arrived at the beginning of the second semester, in January 1878.

Of Rippon, Bixby had stated, “She had relinquished a good position in Detroit with some hesitation, for a preacher returning from Boulder to Michigan had warned her friends that she would enter the new University Building at the risk of her life. Very soon it would fall and kill all within it.”

Bixby also was present for closing exercises in June 1878 when 10 of the students went on to form the first freshman university class beginning the following September.

On one of his last journeys, Bixby remarked on the grounds. The University was surrounded by a wire fence intended to keep out free-ranging cattle. It also kept in the Sewalls’ cow. Everyone entering the campus had to climb over a stile — steps that allowed people, but not animals, to climb over a fence.

Once over the fence, students and teachers crossed a high, rough bridge over a ravine. As Bixby predicted and Brackett reported, “One day this ravine will be filled with lakes and little cascades. On its banks will grow every flower that is native to Colorado. There will be wondrous thickets of shrubbery. Stone walks will wind among them, shaded by every tree of our hills and streams.”

Bixby died in 1894, late enough to begin to see his visions for CU come true. As predicted, the ravine was dammed and made into Varsity Pond with a walkway flanked by maple saplings. The buildings and enrollment had grown, as well, and the recently renovated University Building/Old Main is still standing.

No longer is the campus stark and barren. Now it has more than 200 buildings and approximately 37,000 students. Bixby’s optimism and his “visions of the coming loveliness” have come true.