University Farm sign in 1913 (photo courtesy of University of Minnesota Archives).
When Minnesota became a state in 1858, concerns abounded whether agriculture could ever play a significant role in its future simply because Minnesota’s climate was so different from other agricultural regions. Yet, the Minnesota legislature was optimistic. Even if their hopes proved false, legislators knew they could claim additional federal land grants for the state if they built an agricultural school. Hence in 1858, led by John Harrington Stevens, Minneapolis’ first legal settler, and William Streeter Chowen of Minnetonka, legislation was passed to establish an experimental farm and agricultural college at Glencoe, Minnesota. Unfortunately, the new law did not provide funding, but the college’s promoters assumed federal land grants would soon generate support.
Seven years later, those hopes appeared assured when land grants under the Morrill Act of 1862 were finally made available for a proposed Glencoe Agricultural College. However, state Senator John Sargent Pillsbury, attempting to revive the University of Minnesota which had closed in 1861, realized the Glencoe land grants could be pivotal in ensuring his state university’s future. Consequently, Pillsbury lobbied to have his state university incorporate the planned agricultural college.
In 1867, the State Legislature approved moving the charter for the Glencoe Agricultural College to the university, but the merger was made on the explicit condition that the state university establish an agricultural college and an experimental farm. In addition, the terms of the Morrill Act’s land grant required an agricultural experimental farm. Accordingly, Edward Henry Twining became the revived university’s fourth professor. His appointment was the first step towards an agricultural college at the University of Minnesota. While it may seem odd from a modern perspective to choose a chemist to launch an agricultural college, chemistry was central to 19th century agricultural science. As a graduate student and assistant chemistry instructor in Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School, Twining’s work focused on the analyses of peats and mucks as potential commercial manures.
Edward Henry Twining in 1869 (from 1893 Gopher).
Hence, when the University of Minnesota’s preparatory department opened in 1867, agriculture was one of its two colleges and Principal Washburn recommended a two-year practical course with admission open to anyone sixteen years of age or older. However, an experimental farm required land. Fortunately, Pillsbury owned ninety acres of land east of the University purchased a few years earlier during a period of depressed land prices. Pillsbury let the university have the land for the same low price he had paid for it and an additional thirty acres was purchased. The resulting agricultural tract straddled both sides of University Avenue from the present Oak Street to the foot of the hill now crowned by the distinctive Prospect Park Water Tower.
Location of original University Farm straddling University Avenue to east of main campus.
Unfortunately, those lands had been selected for their proximity to the university rather than their value as farmland. They were ill-suited for crops or cattle, although their inferior quality initially made little difference - as no one applied to the agricultural program. Without any agriculture students, Twining’s role soon shifted to teaching chemistry, natural philosophy, and French. In December of 1869, Daniel Alexander Robertson, then president of the newly formed Minnesota State Horticultural Society, was selected to become the first official Professor of Agriculture, but again no students came forward. Discouraged, Robertson resigned less than a year later.
However, the University still needed an agricultural program to justify its land grants, so in 1872, twenty-one-year-old Dalston P. Strange, a graduate of Michigan Agricultural College’s class of 1871, became the new Professor of Agriculture and of Chemistry. Yet the lack of agriculture students continued. In 1873, President Folwell noted that "So far as I am aware, not a single young man has come to the University to learn the science of farming". Strange struggled for two years but finally left Minnesota at the end of 1873 to study at the Boston Institute of Technology. He died a few years later of tuberculosis.
In 1874, Charles Youdan Lacy took over the Professor of Agriculture position, but the regents believed their commitment to agricultural science needed to be more material. In 1875, the College of Agriculture Building was erected as the University of Minnesota’s second structure. The picturesque two-story stone edifice had a greenhouse wing added in 1876 and the building stood on the present site of 216 Pillsbury Drive.
College of Agriculture Building in 1870s (photo courtesy of University of Minnesota Archives).
Although the building raised public awareness of the university’s agricultural program, the gains were modest. According to Ralph Ervin Miller’s history of the School of Agriculture, Lacy had no students in 1874. In 1875 he had three, but two dropped out. In 1876 there were two students but one dropped out and in 1877 Lacy had only one entering student. Lacy attributed those dwindling numbers in part to the prejudice of other university students. Lacy reported that the ‘farmer students were socially an ostracized class and that the better students soon changed their course.’
Despite his frustration, Lacy continued at the university for fourteen years. Over that time, he became convinced the university’s farmland was unsuitable for any agriculture, much less an experimental farm. In 1880, Lacy left the University of Minnesota, going first to the East Coast and then the West Coast, but avoiding any repeat of Minnesota’s climate.
In 1881, Edward D. Porter was hired to replace Lacy. Porter operated the farm for another season but quickly agreed with Lacy’s assessment of the university’s farmland. Most of the land was either too sandy or too swampy to serve as an experimental farm. In addition, the growing city was beginning to encircle the farm.
Realizing the land’s rising potential value for housing, the regents acted on Porter’s suggestion in 1882 and sold the university farmland for $150,000. They then used those funds to purchase the 155-acre J. W. Bass farm on Como Road in Saint Anthony Park as a new experimental farm. The old Bass farm became the Farm Campus, which formed the core of the present Saint Paul campus. A farmhouse, large barn, and other buildings were erected, yet the number of agriculture students still continued to lag.
Edward D. Porter
University of Minnesota campus in early 1880s (image courtesy of University of Minnesota Archives).
Back on the main campus, the College of Agriculture Building continued to house the chemistry department, a continuation of the close association of agriculture and chemistry that had previously led to Twining’s original appointment. However, on December 3, 1888, a year before Pillsbury Hall was constructed next door, fire destroyed the College of Agriculture Building. Two years later, the Laboratory of Chemistry and Physics was built on the site. That building was renamed the Chemistry Building in 1901 before becoming the Union in 1913. With the construction of Memorial Union in 1940, the building became Old Union. During World War II, from 1942 to 1945, it was the U.S.S. Minnesota, in token of its use as a training academy for U. S. naval officers. It is currently known as 216 Pillsbury Drive.
Chemistry Building in 1908 (photo courtesy of University of Minnesota Archives)
In 1888, the same year the Agricultural College Building burned, seventeen students enrolled in a rebranded and redesigned School of Agriculture on University Farm. A two-year practical course in animal breeding, feeding, farm hygiene and veterinary science had finally attracted a cadre of students. The following year, seventy-six students enrolled and the university’s agricultural program, first attempted under Twining’s guidance two decades earlier, was finally a reality.
Of course, by then Winchell’s Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota and the General Museum were sixteen years old. Within a few years the survey would subdivide into separate geology, zoology, and botany departments and after two decades few of those departments’ staff or students realized they were a legacy of agriculture at the ‘U’.
University Farm images from 1908 to 1928 (photos courtesy of University of Minnesota Archives).