University of Wyoming:
A History Walking Tour of the West Campus (structures located west of 15th Street)
(Sites of demolished buildings are indicated in Italics)
1 Prexy’s Pasture
References to the name appear in the early 20th century, but according to most sources, the name was formally applied during the administration of Arthur Crane in the 1920s. Legend has it that the first UW president, John Hoyt, watched Aven Nelson shoot rabbits in the pasture. The name supposedly refers to the elusive university regulation that, along with a salary, the university president (“prexy”) was given exclusive use of the “pasture” to tether his horse.
“Prexy’s” has been the central mall of the campus from the beginning of the 20th century. Here, on the southwestern corner, the first UW football field was set up when players used leather helmets and little padding. In that same general area, the second campus structure was built–a wooden barn apparently used for storage and demolished within a decade. During the 1930s and 1940s, temporary fencing was installed on occasion in order for the area to accommodate a few days of rodeo events.
The western edge of the “pasture,” like the land on which Old Main is built, was once a part of Laramie’s city park. The rest of the area was part of a sale of land to the University by the Union Pacific Railroad.
In September, 1965, the Board of Trustees voted to construct the Science Center on the western half of “Prexy’s.” After substantial opposition to the plan emerged, the board decided to locate the facility in the parking lot east of the Student Union and, only later, agreeing to build on the current location. In the course of the controversy, a law was passed by the legislature ensuring that no structure could be built on the pasture without legislative approval. The law is still on the books.
In April 1970, hundreds of Wyoming students marched to the campus flagpole on Prexy’s Pasture to demonstrate their shock over the incident. With the support of University President William Carlson, Gov. Stan Hathaway ordered highway patrolmen and national guardsmen to end the demonstration. A confrontation was avoided, however, by the cool-headed intervention of Laramie law enforcement officers. After an all-night vigil around the flagpole, the student demonstrators dispersed and the flag was left flying. This was in striking contrast to the violence attending an earlier “panty raid” incident involving fraternities and male dorm residents surrounding several sorority houses three years earlier that ended only after police were called to break up the boisterous crowd..
The statue by famed UW artist Robert Russin was added to the pasture in 1983 in anticipation of the forthcoming centennial year celebrations held in 1987. East of the statue, buried in the sidewalk and marked by a plaque, is a time capsule buried by ASUW to be unearthed during the 200th anniversary year of the university in 2086.
2 Student Union Building
The structure was authorized by the legislature in 1937. Substantial PWA funding along with bonds issued against student fees provided the construction monies. Several noteworthy murals are contained in the building, the best known in the ballroom on the second floor–Lynn Fausett’s 7×28-foot depiction of the welcome of President Crane to UW in 1922. The mural was dedicated in 1940. Initially, students had to pay an annual fee to use the Union. Faculty were also assessed an entrance fee. “Members” had to show cards before gaining entrance to the building. Bowling lanes once occupied the basement, along with the bookstore. The top room in the tower was the first home of KUWR Radio in 1966.
3 Ross Hall
Constructed in 1959 and opened as a women’s dormitory in 1960, Ross Hall since 1976, it has housed academic offices for a number of departments.
In the early 2000s, the “Wyoming Press Association’s Newspaper Hall of Fame” was established along the walls of the hall on the fourth floor.
The building is named for Nellie Tayloe Ross, the nation’s first woman governor, elected governor of Wyoming in 1924. Gov. Ross did not attend UW, but an incident that led to her election occurred here–in the “assembly room” of Old Main in late September, 1924.
Gov. Ross’ husband, William Ross, had been elected governor of Wyoming in 1922. While his term didn’t expire until 1926, he stumped the state during the 1924 campaign in an effort to gain support for a constitutional amendment to adopt a severance tax on minerals.
During this strenuous statewide speaking tour, Ross spoke to a large crowd of Laramie residents in the Old Main assembly room. Toward the end of his speech, he became ill and, instead of attending the reception following the talk, he was driven back to Cheyenne where, later that evening, he was admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pains. The next morning, his appendix burst and within days, Ross died.
The election, only a month away, suddenly became an election for governor as well as for the constitutional amendment. Partially out of desperation, the Democrats nominated Nellie Tayloe Ross to complete her husband’s term. She won the election, becoming the first woman in America ever to serve as a governor of a state.
Two years later, she was defeated for re-election. After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932, Ross was appointed director of the United States Mint. She stayed in that post until her retirement in 1953. She died in 1976, over 100 years old.
A brass plaque between the elevators on the ground floor of Ross Hall bears her likeness in relief. Only two other campus buildings are named for Wyoming governors (but in both cases, the names were given in recognition of their service as university president and not as governor). The former Ross Hall lobby is now the Rendezvous Cafe.
4 History Building and Coe Library
The two structures are actually one although they do not connect internally. Both were built with gifts from William Robertson Coe, a wealthy oil and insurance man who lived in Cody. He was a friend of Dr. George Humphrey and it is said that the “Duke” influenced his gifts to UW by suggesting that the newly formed “American Studies” program would teach students about the many virtues of American capitalism. UW’s American Studies program was one of four that Coe endowed–the first in the United States. Coe’s bust, set in an alcove in the History Department lobby, has frightened students attending night classes for many years.
The bench and small marker in front of the History Building recognizes the distinguished service of Dr. T. A. Larson, “Mr. Wyoming History,” who taught at UW from 1935 until his retirement in 1976, serving many of those years as department chair. After retirement, he served several terms in the Wyoming State Legislature.
American studies, once a unit of the Department of History, became a separate program in the late 1980s when it was moved to the Cooper House across the street.
The library moved to the site from what is now the Aven Nelson building in 1958 when the library held 275,000 volumes. A new addition was added in the 1980s and the holdings grew to more than 1 1/2 million volumes by 2005. With another addition in the early 2000s, the library entrance was moved from the west end of the building to the northeast side. The Wyoming collection of rare books is housed in the Chisum Room, named in honor of long-time reference librarian/historian Emmett Chisum who endowed the library with a significant gift on his death in 2009.
5 New Addition to Coe Library (2009) once the site of the Anthropology Building and the Law School
The building, located where the new addition to Coe Library now stands, was demolished in 2007. From the time of its construction in 1953, it housed the UW College of Law until 1977 when the new Law Building was completed on the east campus. The bas-relief sculptures are the work of Robert Russin. Prior to demolition of the building, they were moved to the current law school. Anthropology occupied the building from 1980 to 2007. The department is now housed in its own building on the north side of Lewis Street, across the street from the Engineering Building.
6 Business College (the west part was formerly the College of Commerce and Industry)
Built in 1962, the structure provided offices and classrooms for business courses formerly taught in the Liberal Arts Building. The “mall” east of the building was added in the middle 1970s, many of the trees taken from the site to the UW golf course. Later, in the early 2000s, a huge new addition was added, including a large atrium around which a “ticker-tape” lighted display keeps viewers informed of stock market news and conditions.
7 Cooper House
Constructed in the 1920s by Englishman Richard Cooper, the house hosted many of Cooper’s famous friends, including Ernest Hemingway, Cooper’s neighbor in his winter home in Havana, Cuba. The house was home to a number of displaced British children, evacuated from the London blitz during the early years of World War II. Cooper drowned in a lake while on an African safari in the 1950s. His widow died soon after. Cooper’s sister, Barbara, continued to live in the house and care for the two Cooper children. The son is said to have repaired his motorcycle in the main living room beneath the Remingtons and Catlins lining the walls. When Barbara died, the university received the property, but not the contents of the house. They were auctioned off, down to the doorknobs and fireplace mantles.
In the middle 1980s, the university considered razing the building for a parking lot to accommodate the Commerce and Industry college. A group of citizens, led by Prof. Walter Edens of the UW English Department, Dave and Jamie Egolf, Rick Headlee, visiting history professor Sherry Smith, and this writer forced the university to drop the plan and retain the building. In 1988, the university relocated the American Studies program into the building.
8 Alumni House
The house was once the home of Laramie banker Fred Forbes. The Alumni Association, originally formed in 1895, moved into the house in the 1980s. Some offices moved to the Gateway Center, east campus, in the early 2010s, but a few of their offices still remain on this 14th and Grand site, a bucking horse and rider statue marking the site on the corner.
9 President’s House (now a privately-owned home)
Purchased as the home for UW’s presidents in 1949, it was first occupied by George “Duke” Humphrey and all succeeding presidents until Terry Roark. The trustees sold the house in the 1990s, opting to pay the presidents a housing allowance rather than maintaining a home, practically on the campus, for their use. Initial purchasers of the home had close ties to Laramie and the University. Amy Williamson is the daughter and granddaughter of Laramie attorneys and her aunt Amy Abbott served as long-time secretary for the State Board of Charities and Reform early in the 20th century. The Williamsons sold the house in 2016.
10 Knight Hall
The west half was completed in 1941 and the east portion, five years later. The structure served as a dormitory until 1971 (first, for women and, later, in the 1960s, for graduate men). It was converted into offices and reopened in 1972. It was officially named on April 15, 1941, for Emma Howell Knight, the mother of famed geology professor Samuel Knight. Mrs. Knight served as dean of women from 1911-1921.
When excavations were made for the building, five bodies were unearthed, several with evidence of bullet wounds. In the summer of 2004, crews laying new pipe in the “alley” west of Knight, encountered another burial, apparently from the same early-day burying ground.
KUWR, Wyoming Public Radio, occupies the basement west end of the building. The station, in its current form, dates from 1966 although its first location was the top floor of the “tower” of the Student Union Building. It was moved to its current location soon after the rest of the building was converted to offices.
Actually, the beginnings of public radio date from 1926 when Wyoming’s first radio station was established in the basement of the Episcopal Cathedral through funding provided by Mrs. Edward Harriman, widow of the UP Railroad magnate, who believed such a facility was needed in Laramie for the benefit of railway crews having to take trains over the summit.
Soon after it was started, a tragic accident led to the electrocution of a young engineer. The incident, combined with a change in church bishops, led to the equipment being boxed up and sent to UW for student operation.
The University of Wyoming returned the station to service in January 1929, as KWYO, but it was during the heart of the Great Depression. The legislature failed to provide funds to keep the operation going. Public radio operates from the basement of Knight Hall, but public television has never broadcast from the UW campus, even though President George “Duke” Humphrey was the first university president in America to propose educational television broadcasts from campuses.
11 Foundation House (southeast corner, Ivinson and 12th St.)
Recently, the administration announced that the building will become home to the University Honors Program (July 2017). Once the home of the family of banker John Guthrie, the house was obtained by the university in the 1980s. About half of the existing structure was an addition, tastefully appended by the university to the east of the original structure. The building once housed the University of Wyoming Foundation, a semi-autonomous unit charged with overseeing university fund-raising and management over funds raised from private sources.
Mrs. Guthrie, the wife of the first owner, is said to have been the individual most responsible for retaining the “state park” designation for the area across the street and west of the Foundation House. She liked to walk her dog in the rea and enjoyed the flowers and open spaces in the park-like area. When she learned of trustee plans to build the Education Building on the site, she asked a legislator to introduce a special bill barring such structures without legislative approval. (See “State Park,” below).
12 University-owned house(southwest corner of 12th & Ivinson)
In 2013, the university purchased the house from the Jenkins family for use as the home of the incoming UW President Robert Sternberg. The house was extensively remodeled and a modern two-car garage was added. Sternberg resigned after 137 days as president. To date, the house remains UW property.
13 Hoyt Hall
Built in 1916 as a dormitory, Hoyt Hall was named for the university’s first president, Dr. John W. Hoyt, who had also served as a Wyoming territorial governor. The structure now houses academic offices. after being remodeled recently (2015-17).
In the spring of 1939, the university hosted a visit by famed poet Robert Frost. Following his visit, a room in the building, already offices for the Department of English, was renamed the “Frost Library.”
The story is told that English professor Wilson O. Clough was once lecturing in a room on the ground floor. He leaned back on his seat, the sill of an open window, waving his arm to emphasize an important point. Suddenly, he went backward, tumbling out of the window and onto the lawn a few feet below. Unhurt, Clough’s head reappeared in the open window, much to the surprise of the astonished class. “As I was saying…” he said, continuing the point of his lecture without interruption.
Hoyt died two years before the building was named for him. In all likelihood, he might have gained some satisfaction from the honor, given that his parting from UW in December of 1890 was anything but amicable. He was fired by the trustees. One trustee stated that Hoyt was “too visionary and impractical.”
14 American Indian Studies House (southwest corner, 10th and Ivinson)
Once the home of the UW honors program, the building was designated as the home for American Indian Studies in 2017.
15 Student Health (and the Cheney Center for International Programs)
Built at the same time as Ross Hall (1960), the building housed the School of Nursing until 2005 when the program moved to the Health Sciences Building. Previously, the location was often used for military drills. A photograph in the American Heritage Center collections shows the women’s cadet corps, in the early teens, standing at attention on the site, rifles on shoulders, and facing Prexy’s Pasture. To the south of the building, the UW in floral pattern-dates to as early as the 1950s.
16 Merica Hall
The first building on campus constructed as a dormitory, Merica Hall was completed in 1908. It is named for Charles Merica, UW president from 1908-12. Merica, a sociologist, was an ambitious builder. Among other structures, he proposed a museum building as well as a university hospital. Funding for both were rejected by the legislature.
According to Wilson Clough, author of a UW history in the 1960s, Merica left “in disappointment and bitterness,” burning his papers and resigning without providing much notice.
Next to Merica Hall was a small pond, known as “peanut pond” to generations of UW students. The site of the annual “tug-of-war” between the incoming freshmen and the sophomores, the pond was drained in the 1950s, probably due to the mosquito problems it was said to foster.
17 “State Park”
Before the university was founded, the land bordered by 9th Street, Hoyt Hall, and Ivinson Street was Laramie’s City Park. When the town sought the university for Laramie, it offered that site for the new campus. Old Main, the first campus building, rose in the middle of that former town park.
Campus officials considered building what became Ross Hall on this corner. Nearby residents were concerned that the area represented one of the last open spaces on campus. Consequently, the Wyoming Legislature passed a bill, introduced by Sen. Frank Mockler of Fremont County, in 1959, that set the land aside permanently as a state park (Prexy’s Pasture was set aside in similar fashion in the 1960s by legislative act). Though UW expanded throughout the years, the land remained vacant until a marker was placed there in 1966 by the Alumni Association to memorialize former UW students who died in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam memorial is a stone marker on which bronze plates are affixed noting the names of 17 former UW alumni killed in the war as well as a statement about the importance of their sacrifice. Dedication of the Vietnam Memorial, UW, was in the fall of 1966. In 2013, the memorial was re-dedicated and a new plaque was added with the names of 118 Wyomingites who died in the war.
The marker seemed tucked away among bushes and trees in the earlier years. Nonetheless, it was the focus for an Anti-War March in the fall of 1969. More than 700 Wyoming students participated in a march as part of the nationwide Vietnam moratorium. The event was overshadowed by the “Black 14” incident which began two days later.
The statue to the east center (dedicated in 2013) honors the memory of long-time UW groundskeeper Tommy Thompson who worked at beautifying UW grounds for 33 years despite his physical disabilities.
The grassy expanse was the site in the 1960s-1980s of the annual “Elizabethan Faire,” sponsored by the Department of English.
18 “Ivinson Hospital” parking lot (between Ivinson and Grand, 10th and 11th)
The cornerstone for this, the town’s hospital, was laid June 7, 1916. Laramie banker Edward Ivinson donated $50,000 toward the construction and the building was named for him. In 1973, the new hospital on 30th Street was completed and the following year, the old building was sold to UW. The UW computers were moved from the basement of the Biological Sciences building to the new home in the newly renovated building in the middle 1970s. Hazardous waste was once stored in barrels in the basement, residue from nuclear physics experiments on campus. The materials were moved and buried on a site northeast of the airport in the late 1980s.
19 Old Main
This building, when it was still unfinished, constituted the University when it opened to 42 students and five faculty in September 1887. The site was the center of what had been Laramie’s city park, a block of ten acres of land deeded by the Union Pacific Railroad to the city soon after the town was laid out. The park was the terminus of “Center Street,” designed to be the main avenue in the town. Later, the street was renamed University. (And, in the 1920s, Ivinson Avenue gained its name–changed from Thornburgh, in honor of the captain who had died in the aftermath of the so-called “Meeker massacre” in 1879).
As early as 1881, Gov. John Hoyt requested that the legislature accept 65 sections of federal lands for establishment of a university. The action did not occur until 1885. According to Deborah Hardy, Hoyt said years later: “Had the establishment of a university not brought with it certain financial benefits, it is unlikely that the territorial legislature would have considered it at all.”
The territorial legislature designated the town where the new university would be located. Stephen W. Downey was the principal legislative proponent of Laramie as the location. The commonly repeated myth that the capital went to Cheyenne and Rawlins then chose the prison rather than the university, is untrue. Laramie, the second-largest “city” in the territory, had second pick and, even though the choice caused loss of the prison (located here by the federal government in the early 1870s), Laramie leaders wanted the university. Hoyt worked for its establishment, bowing to Laramie as the location even though he had formed an institute earlier in Cheyenne that might have become the basis for a state college. More than the original block was needed for the institution. Consequently, the Union Pacific sold the adjoining 20 acres to the University for $37.50 per acre.
In the early years, every function was housed in Old Main–then known as the “Main building.” When Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard accepted the job as university librarian, she presided over a collection of some 3,000 volumes stacked in the library on the second floor. The “assembly room” held not only morning assemblies for the entire university in those days, but also served as a primary lecture hall for visiting dignitaries. Even though the room could accommodate the entire student body and faculty well into the early 1900s, it was insufficiently large to hold the crowd coming to hear President Theodore Roosevelt when he visited Laramie in 1903. He spoke from the front (west) porch prior to mounting a horse and riding the 50 miles over the summit to Cheyenne.
As late as 1904, UW consisted of Old Main, a barn behind it to the east (used by ag), Mechanical Hall and heating plant annex, Science Hall (now Geology), and “new” gymnasium completed in 1904.
Students in the university school occupied rooms on the second and third floor until 1909 when a “normal school” building was constructed. As Clough wrote, young elementary and secondary students “trooped up the wooden stairs” to their rooms on the south side of the building.
Major renovations of the structure were made in 1949 and again in the middle 1970s. The tower was removed when it was determined to be unsafe in 1916, making it easy to date photographs of Laramie based on that feature’s presence.
20 O’Brien Memorial Fountain(west of Old Main)
The fountain memorializes the death of Lowell O’Brien, a young student, killed in a riding accident suffered on Oct. 10, 1922. Students and faculty organized an “Old West” greeting for the new President A. G. Crane. He was met on the summit by “an escort” and rode in a stagecoach down the hill. Before the event, O’Brien, an expert rider, decided to make certain that each horse was “tame” enough for novice student riders. When he mounted one of the animals, the horse spooked and the young student, seeing the horse bolting toward some students standing in front of a fence, started to dismount in order to halt the horse before it ran into the students. His intervention saves several other students from injury, but he was struck by the horse and died of his injuries ten days later. A painting of the president’s arrival appears as a mural in the Student Union Ballroom. Does O’Brien appear in the mural?
21 Street Lamps, Benches (west of Old Main)
The metal lamp posts, in classic style, were donated by two classes in the early 1900s. This area was once the focal point for student gatherings in good weather, at a time when Old Main housed the library and many classes were held in that building. The area also was along the route most students took from the university to boarding houses and other living areas where most students lived during the pre-World War I period. These early classes made gifts of the street lamps and benches for the use and enjoyment of future students, presumably still using the area. Foot traffic in the area declined in the 1920s as Prexy’s Pasture became a more central point for students going to and leaving classes and as Old Main became entirely an office building.
22 Williams Conservatory (south addition to the Aven Nelson Building)
The conservatory raised historic preservation concerns when it was built prior to the university seeking approval for the construction on grounds of the “state park.” In mitigation of the error, the university agreed to pay the salary of a historical architect to teach historic architecture for the following 15 years. Prof. Jim Rose once taught the courses.
23 Aven Nelson Building (formerly the UW Library)
Built in 1924, the structure housed the University Library. The top floor east was the first permanent home of the UW College of Law, formed in 1920. It is named for one of the original five faculty at UW, a man who became nationally renowned in his field of botany and who spent several years as university president, stepping aside just as this building was completed.
Few states in the West had sufficient funds to embark on building programs in the 1920s. This building is the happy result of decisions made by one of those “unsung heroes” of the university, a surveyor and former prospector named F. O. Sawin.
Sawin, the brother of UWs first mathematics professor, was the surveyor hired in the 1880s to select the university’s “land grant” lands. Sawin had come to Wyoming in 1872 from Kansas where his father had been a pioneer. He was appointed by Hoyt and F. E. Warren in 1886 to make the selections. Among them were lands that became extraordinarily rich with mineral deposits, including the famed Big Muddy Oilfield near Glenrock. The “university well” came in in 1916, providing substantial royalties to UW from which revenues were applied to construction of the new library as well as the new Half Acre Gym.
Aven Nelson is the subject of a biography by Roger Williams as well as a book by American Studies associate professor Frieda Knobloch. While the Williams Conservatory, south of the building, may seem logically placed next to the structure named for Wyoming’s leading botanist, the modern glassed structure was authorized without the approval of the State Historic Preservation Office who was charged to maintaining the historical integrity of that portion of the campus, placed on the National Register as a historic district. Consequently, the university had to mitigate the error by providing generous support for courses to be taught on historic preservation.
Note that the “cornerstone” statement is: “Reading maketh a full man.” Defacements suggest another statement
24 George “Duke” Humphrey Science Center
Biological sciences are housed in the southern structure while physical sciences occupies the northern building. Between them is what was the Science Library until the main university library was expanded in the early 2000s. It now serves as library storage. The uniquely designed Classroom Building completes the complex, built in 1967-69 and named for UW President George “Duke” Humphrey who served as president when the complex was being planned.
The architects for the buildings were the well-known Hitchcock brothers of Laramie. Their father, also an architect, was killed in a car accident soon after his second marriage. His new widow, Verna Hitchcock, raised the stepchildren and also served as a professor of home economics at UW. The house just west of here, obtained by the School of Environment and Natural Resources, was her home that she donated to the university after her death.
According to legend, the design for the Classroom Building had its origins in a glass cake mold that one of the brothers saw sitting on the table at home. Another story says it was inspired by the standing rib roast at a Sunday dinner. In an interview with a student in the early 1990s, architect Clinton Hitchcock strongly denied the truth of both stories.
The interior murals, done by UW art professors in the 1960s, depict the four quadrants of Wyoming. Murals are by James Boyle, Victor Flack, Richard Evans, and Joseph Dederick.
The basement of the Biological Sciences Building, the area south of what was the Science Library, once housed the university’s main frame computer. There, students in the 1970s, would enter data onto punch cards to be fed into the giant machine.
25 Arts and Sciences Building
Originally known as the Liberal Arts building, the contract for its construction was let in January-February 1935 to Kirchhoff Construction Co. of Denver. At the time the contract was let, about 28 percent of the stone for the structure had been quarried. Wyoming Eagle, Feb. 1, 1935, p. 12. (The article includes a good drawing of the architect’s rendition).
Gov. Leslie Miller broke ground for the building on February 8, 1935. Substantial funding for the structure came from the Public Works Administration.
26 Statue of Ben Franklin
The statue seems out of place so far from the famous patriot and inventor’s home in Pennsylvania. The statue, another work by Robert Russin, was commissioned by three Cheyenne residents, all children of Warren Richardson, Sr., novelist, mine developer, and oil man–Warren, Clarence and Vilaria Richardson. The three were influential donors to the university in the mid-20th century. The family home in Cheyenne, a heavily turreted Victorian-style mansion, was located where the Hathaway state office building now stands.
27 Health Sciences Center (formerly “Chem-Zoo” Building)
The core of the structure was built as a classroom building in 1914 primarily for the College of Agriculture. The departments of chemistry and zoology occupied the building for many years. Many a frog and shark were dissected on the lab tables in these rooms. Some former UW students, including this writer, still think they detect the smell of formaldehyde when he walks into the building, surely a function of memory over fact. The north portion was constructed as the College of Pharmacy (1969).
28 Bureau of Mines
The structure was completed in 1945, serving as home for the Bureau of Mines. It now also houses the university Publications Office and the Western Research Institute.
29 Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center
30 Earth Science Building
The new addition to the Geology Building was completed in 1995.
31 Geology Building
The original part was built in 1902 as “Science Hall.” (Note the date on the Masonic cornerstone on the southwest corner of the building). The rest was added in the 1920s, including the distinctive Geology Museum, containing an extraordinary collection of fossils and bones. East of the front entrance to the Geology Museum, now almost hidden by trees, is the large metal dinosaur built by Dr. Samuel Knight. The copper-plated model was completed after two years’ work in April, 1964. It has served as a popular “rendezvous” site ever since.
32 Enzi S.T.E.M. Undergraduate Labs (between 10th and 11th on Lewis)
Named for U. S. Senator Mike Enzi who assisted with getting substantial federal funding for the project, completed in 2016.
33 Energy Innovation Center
The structure houses the School of Energy Resources, Enhanced Oil Recovery Center, Carbon Management Institute, and 3D Visualization Center.
34 Engineering Education and Research Building
(under construction, July 2018)
35 Engineering Building
The original portion of the building was constructed in 1926. In the early years of UW, engineering and agriculture were combined in one college.
The Engineers’ Ball, an annual event held in the Half Acre Gym, led to a short-lived student strike in 1931. The strike was called Dec. 4, 1931, to protest the activities of President Arthur Crane during and after the engineers’ ball. The president left the dance, went outside and went from car to car in the parking areas, brandishing a flashlight in an attempt to determine whether any hanky-panky was occurring in the vehicles. He told some students, “You come out here for all your drinking and petting. You ought to go to First Street where you belong.” His moral crusade apparently failed, but so did the strike. Crane called in police and students returned to classes after two days. After the incident, Crane apparently stayed out of darkened parking lots. The motto above the main door often gains the attention of environmentalists: “Strive on–The Control of Nature is Won–Not Given.”
36 Agriculture Building
Completed in 1949 and dedicated the following year, the structure, like its two neighbors had huge additions added to the rear in the 1980s. Like the other buildings on this row, temporary student housing was built behind the Ag College after World War II in order to accommodate returning veterans. Similar housing occupied what is now Fraternity Park. Immediately behind the new addition was the annex once housing the sales room for the College of Agriculture. There, one could purchase cheese, ice cream, and other products produced by the UW dairy farm. The sales room closed in the 1970s.
37 Anthropology Building
Across the street east of the Enzi Science Center is the Anthropology Building, housing that department as well as offices of the state archaeologist and the State Historic Preservation Office. Anthropology, once a division of the Department of Sociology, once was housed on the second floor of the Arts and Sciences Building and, later, in the building (now demolished) vacated by the UW College of Law in 1977. Throughout the years, parts of the anthropology collections have been stored in campus buildings as well as off-site. With the new building, the department opened the anthropology museum on the ground floor of the new location.
38 The “W” on “W Hill”
From the top floors of the new additions to the Ag and Engineering schools, one can see the “W” on the hill north of the campus. At one time, the letter was clearly visible from almost anywhere on the campus. “Go out in the back steps of the University or any other convenient place about town and take a look at the red hills northeast of Laramie,” the Wyoming Student (predecessor to the Branding Iron) urged on Sept. 30, 1913. “You will there see a large ‘W’ that was never there before.”
The article referred to the “W” on the hill in the north part of Laramie. Known for years as “W Hill,” the marker lent its name to a Laramie street, thus confusing a long line of new residents who thought the official name was actually “West Hill Street”.
The idea for the letter on the hill, then in a distant unpopulated part of what is now residential Laramie, came from the freshman class in 1913—the class known then as the “class of ’17.”
The W was 50 feet high by 80 feet wide and “consists of a layer of six inches of broken white limestone laid in a trench.” Later, the class planned to whitewash the rocks. According to the article, “passengers on incoming and outgoing trains from both directions can see the ‘W.’”
The student newspaper wrote:. “…it would be a nice thing to make the whitewashing an annual celebration, held in the fall of each year, allowing the incoming Freshman class to do the work.”
A few years later, it is clear that the tradition stuck. As years passed, the tradition of “whitewashing the W” continued.
39 Education Building
Constructed in 1952, the building contains murals by well-known muralist Edward Grigware. The east portion of the building houses University School for grades 1-8. Until the 1980s, a high school was part of the system. Called “University Prep,” the school enjoyed numerous state championships in various sports as well as high achievements in academics.
40 McWhinnie Hall (formerly Graduate Hall)
Constructed in 1928, the building served variously as a dormitory and as offices. The University Post Office occupied the ground floor until the late 1990s. The building was renamed to honor Ralph McWhinnie, long-time UW registrar.
41 Wyoming Hall
Completed in 1951 as a dormitory, the hall was well-known as the home of UW athletes in the 1950s. Some referred to the structure quite derisively as “ape dorm,” including many of its residents in those days. The dorm was used for “overflow” after construction of the Hill-Crane complex in 1959.
42 Half Acre Gym
Built with funds from oil royalties earned on university lands, the gym replaced the “Little Gym” that was located behind Old Main. A state-of-the-art facility for its time, the building was still home court for the UW basketball team of 1943 that won the NCAA national championship. On the floor in this building, Kenny Sailors perfected the jump shot he had invented on his family’s farm near Hillsdale in the 1930s.
43 Corbett Field (now the parking lot east of the Student Union Building)
In 1926, the first formal facilities for football were constructed on what is now the parking lot east of the Student Union. Named for UW’s first paid coach John Corbett, the stadium was demolished after World War II when War Memorial Stadium was built on the east campus. Tennis courts once occupied what is now the site of the paid lot to the north of the larger parking lot.
–Phil Roberts, written in 2004, revised July 2017