“Students are open-minded and open-hearted in the inter-mountain West. There’s a spirit of freedom: freedom in the landscape and freedom in the minds of people.”
— 2018 Foundation Professor of English Michael Branch
Jeff Dow
The beautiful campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, holds a special place of significance to so many of us. It was here that we made lifelong friendships and connections, discovered our passions, found our purpose — became who we are. As the University approaches its monumental 150th anniversary on Oct.12, 2024, it is the perfect moment to reflect on where our history began, celebrate the pioneers who came before us and the achievements of today, and keep dreaming.
On Oct. 12, 1874, an ocean of purple-green sagebrush was rippling in the wind gusting down from Peavine Peak where Morrill Hall stands today. Sage grouse and squirrels were the closest thing to a student body you’d find in the then-desolate landscape that would become our campus. There was no University of Nevada, Reno yet, but the history of Nevada’s flagship land-grant university began that day nearly 150 years ago, in a home much further away — Elko.
The State University of Nevada in Elko — the preparatory school which would become our University — had seven students on the first day of class in the single brick building. D.R. Sessions, 27 years old and freshly graduated from Princeton University, was the sole faculty member. Nevadans were puzzled by the choice of location; several citizens wrote letters to the editors to voice their opinions: Elko was too remote, too inaccessible. And, in 1885, due to lack of enrollment, the campus shut down and moved to Reno.
The University and the city it calls home have had a symbiotic relationship since the beginning, when there was no dazzling neon or bustling casinos and Reno was a small railroad town. The population was scarcely 3,500 people, with horses as the only mode of transportation on the unpaved streets.
Just as Reno is affectionately known as “The Biggest Little City in the World,” the University has that same bigyet-small feel; the camaraderie and support of a closely knit community with the freedom and opportunity to dream big. The supportive locale surrounding the University is its defining feature, which the city’s first elected mayor George F. Turrittin acknowledged in his speech at the University’s Tri-Decennial Celebration, and his words still ring true today:
“The people of Reno take a deep interest in the welfare of this University. It is the particular pride of this city. Our people have marked its growth from its infancy until now, it is known as one of the leading educational institutions of the West, and it is with pride that they point to the fact that its graduates have taken prominent positions in various parts of the world.”
Morrill Hall — a lone brick building situated between dramatic snow-capped peaks, expanses of sagebrush and dusty hills — housed the entire campus in 1887. The University soon began offering college-level instruction, thanks to the enduring spirits of the University’s first President LeRoy D. Brown and first faculty member Hannah K. Clapp.
Brown was a Civil War veteran and former Ohio commissioner of education. He hired Clapp to teach English and history and oversee the library. Born in upstate New York and trained as a teacher in Michigan, Clapp joined her brother’s wagon train to California; eventually settling in Nevada, where she was a pioneer of education and opened Reno’s first kindergarten, as well as other schools, and co-founded the Twentieth Century Club, a progressive women’s organization that planted the trees along Riverside Drive.
“Today you are thrilling with pride in your grounds, buildings, equipments, and all the comforts of modern improvements. In 1887, perched on the hillside, [we] were but a basement and an attic and another story. The institution was reached only by a romantic path — no pavements anywhere. When the rains began, we paved the path ourselves with overshoes and good intentions. We had no electricity. Instead, we burned the midnight oil, that made the blackness yet more palpable; we could see it in the air — smell it, too.”
- First faculty member and librarian Hannah Clapp (1904)
Let’s take a walk through the rich history of people, events, traditions and achievements that led us to where we are today.
1874: The State University of Nevada opened in Elko and welcomed seven students.
1886: The University formally reopened as a preparatory school in the new Morrill Hall on the Reno campus. Classes began with 75 students enrolled.
1891: The first commencement ceremony took place in McKissick Opera House with the inaugural graduating class: Frederick Bristol, Henry Coleman Cutting and Frank Herbert Norcross. A year later, Blanche Davis became the first woman to graduate from the University.
1893: The first issue of a student-run newspaper, “The Student Record” (now named “The Nevada Sagebrush”) was published on Oct. 19 in secret after the Board of Regents denied the students’ petition to start a student newspaper.
1894: University graduates organized the Alumni Association of the University of Nevada.
1896: The first residence halls were built on campus — Lincoln Hall for men and Manzanita Hall for women. If you were a student living in Lincoln or Manzanita Hall in February of 1902, you would’ve been stuck in your dorm room for the foreseeable future when University President Joseph Stubbs ordered all students living on campus to quarantine due to a smallpox epidemic. Students who defied the quarantine were suspended. Sixteen years later, students would be in the same position during the 1918 flu pandemic. Students living on campus in the distant future of 2020 would endure a similar situation when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the University to close its campus.
1897: Anne Martin ’1894 (arts & science) founded the Department of History. She helped lead the Nevada Suffrage Amendment, which passed by an overwhelming majority in 1914, giving many women in Nevada the right to vote. She was the first woman to run for the United States Senate, losing twice in 1918 and 1920 but paving the way for generations of women to follow.
1898: Outfitted in rudimentary equipment on a dirt field surrounded by sagebrush, the first football team was formed in 1898. Mackay Athletic Field was a small field located in what is now Hilliard Plaza. The field, like so many other monuments and buildings over the years, was named after John William Mackay, the Bonanza King who struck it rich with silver mines. His son, Clarence H. Mackay, became the University’s first major benefactor as he shared his prosperity and wealth to honor his father’s contributions to the state of Nevada.
1899: Donning uniforms with full sleeves, starchy buttoned collars and billowing bloomers, the women’s basketball team secured the University’s first intercollegiate sports win, defeating Stanford 3-2 on April 11.
1908: The University of Nevada Quadrangle was completed, designed after Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia Lawn. The Quad’s newly planted elm saplings lined the east and west sides. The University welcomed a new building, the Mackay Mines Building which still perches on the tip of the Quad.
1908: Distinguished Nevadan James Church ’1892 (arts & sciences), ’37 (Honorary Doctor of Laws) was a classics professor, yet he is best known as the “father of snow science.” His passion for mountaineering expeditions in the Sierra Nevada led him to develop the “Mt. Rose Snow Sampler” in 1908, a device that revolutionized snow science because of its ability to measure the water content as well as the depth of snow.
1923: The University’s early athletics teams were referred to as the Sagebrushers or the Sagehens until a local journalist wrote an editorial expressing his distaste: “To my mind the meek and inoffensive Sagehen in no way, shape or manner can be construed to symbolize Nevada’s fight and do-or-die determination for which her athletic teams have long been famous.” In their writing, they also proposed a new name, the “Desert Wolves.” The name stuck — and the Wolf Pack became Nevada’s official mascot in 1923.
1928: Wá·šiw Tribe member Lloyd Barrington ’28 (political science) became the first Native American to graduate from the University.
1930: Theodore Miller, ’30 (electrical engineering) became the University’s first Black man graduate. He went on to have a distinguished career as an electrical engineer and taught radiological defense at Stanford University.
1944: With its classically designed campus reminiscent of East Coast colleges and its close proximity to the West Coast, the University became a prime location for several Hollywood films in the 1940-50s, including: “Blonde Trouble” (1944), “Margie” (1946), “Apartment for Peggy” (1948), “Mother is a Freshman” (1949) and “Mr. Belvedere Goes to College” (1949). When too many students missed class for a chance in the limelight as extras, the Board of Regents ruled the University campus could only be used for filming during holidays and breaks.
1946: The Wolf Pack Football Team took a stand against racial injustice in 1946 when they voted unanimously to cancel their game at Mississippi State after that school’s athletic director sent Nevada a request to play without their two Black players, Bill Bass and Horace Gillom. The team agreed: if Bass and Gillom couldn’t play, none of them would. In the same year, Marion Motley, a standout at Nevada from 1940-42, was one of the four Black players who broke the color barrier in the NFL when he signed with the Cleveland Browns.
1951: Margery McNight Carr ’51 (geology), ’64 (M.Ed.) was the only woman in the Mackay School of Mines, and just the third in the program’s history. In 2023, the Mackay Muckers Women’s Team won first place in the International Collegiate Mining Competition in Australia.
1952: Stella Mason Parson ’52 (English) became the first Black female graduate, with a bachelor’s in English.
1958: Construction concluded on the Jot Travis Student Union, which alumni helped fund.
1961: Faculty Emeritus and Distinguished Nevadan Robert Laxalt ’47 (English) founded the University of Nevada Press, which continues to strengthen Nevada’s rich literary tradition. The press has published more than 740 books from a total of 530 authors.
1963: The University’s FM radio station, KUNR, began broadcasting on October 7 and is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. KNCC began broadcasting in 1992 and in 2016, KNCJ was launched.
1967: The Upward Bound program, one of the first in the nation, started offering support and services to low-income students at the University.
1968: The American Indian Organization launched a campus chapter.
1968: Black students on campus founded the Black Students’ Union, an organization dedicated to serving Black students in the University community, local high school students and minorities in the area.
1977: Rebecca Stafford became first female dean at the University. She was the dean of Arts & Science until 1979.
1978: Joseph N. Crowley became the 13th president of the University of Nevada, Reno, beginning the longest presidential tenure at the University.
1979: Nevada Women’s Swimming & Diving Team captured the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women Championship, the first national championship for a Wolf Pack women’s team.
1981: The University of Nevada, Reno Foundation was established to generate private support for the University.
1985: The Nevada Legislature named the campus grounds a state arboretum. The variety of trees on campus represents over 60 genera and about 200 species.
1987: The Nevada Writers Hall of Fame was conceived by then-President of the Friends of the University Libraries Marilyn Melton ’86 (Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters), who envisioned a celebration to encourage excellence among established and emerging writers in Nevada. In 1996, the late Larry Struve ’64 (political science) expanded the event to include the Silver Pen Award, recognizing emerging or mid-career writers of promise.
1991: The University of Nevada, Reno Powwow was started by the Native American Student Association and since 2005, the powwow has been held annually to honor graduates and celebrate their cultures.
1997: The University Honor Court was dedicated in 1997 to celebrate the contributions and impact of faculty, students, employees and community members who have contributed to the University’s history and success.
1999: Wolf Pack Radio, a student-operated AM radio station, began broadcasting.
2004: The first men’s basketball team to make it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. The second was in 2018.
2006: The women’s soccer team won the WAC Championship.
2008: The Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center opened its doors as one of the most technologically advanced libraries and campus technology services facilities in the country.
2013: Homecoming is a week of festivities that has been bringing alumni, students and the community together to celebrate the Wolf Pack since 1920. The March from the Arch brought the community and campus together with a parade from the Reno Arch to the University Quad.
2014: The new Earthquake Engineering Laboratory building opened to house the largest shake table array in the U.S.
2018: Debra Harry, a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, was hired full-time in 2018 to develop the Indigenous studies program, currently offered as a minor. Paiute language courses are now offered through the University’s Department of World Languages & Literatures as well.
2018: The University attained the prestigious Carnegie R1 Research Institution designation, reserved for doctoral universities with the highest levels of research activity.
2021: Thanks to a partnership with Apple, the Digital Wolf Pack Initiative was created to provide equal access to technology and to augment digital literacy. Now, all new incoming freshmen and fulltime transfer students receive an Apple iPad Air, Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard Folio as they begin on campus with NevadaFIT.
2022: The University acquired Sierra Nevada University and, with it, revived the Nevada Ski Team. Skiing and winter sports are integral to the Reno-Tahoe area and have a rich history at the University. The first ski program was started in 1936 by Wayne Poulsen ’37 (psychology) and had 14 top-10 team finishes at the NCAA Championships, produced four Olympians and boasts seven members of the Wolf Pack Athletics Hall of Fame.
2022: The University established the Office of Indigenous Relations with Daphne Emm Hooper as the inaugural director.
2023: The Mathewson Gateway District project began with the opening of the Gateway Parking Complex featuring a pedestrian bridge to Morrill Hall. Construction also began on a new College of Business building.
2023: The “Artemisia” yearbook was published on and off from 1899-2008, providing photographic documentation of the people and events who shaped the history of the University. In 2023, a limited edition “Artemisia” returned thanks to the efforts of members of the Associated Students of the University of Nevada.
While our University has expanded dramatically from its humble beginnings in Elko and Reno, with record-high student enrollment, a diverse student body, renowned faculty, leading-edge technology and an expansive campus community that reaches to the shores of Lake Tahoe and beyond, it is not the buildings or technology that define the University — it is the people.
You are scholars and researchers and artists and musicians and engineers and athletes. You are caregivers, librarians, teachers, administrators, coaches, entrepreneurs, writers, public servants, scientists, historians, journalists, mathematicians, astronauts, advocates, agriculturalists and catalysts of change. You are visionaries and activists and dreamers and leaders and colleagues and mentors and mothers and fathers and children and siblings and friends. Together, we are The Wolf Pack Family, forever threads in the vibrant tapestry of the University’s exceptional history.
“It has often been said that the alumni of an institution are its chief strength. Our alumni … [are] scattered the length and breadth of the earth, everywhere uplifting the banner of Nevada.”
– Professor Nathaniel E. Wilson ’50 (Honorary Doctor of Laws)