University of Redlands

The University of Redlands traces its founding to the San Francisco earthquake of nineteen oh six. When that disaster wrecked the finances of two American Baptist colleges in Northern and Southern California, a commission began searching for a location to consolidate them. Redlands pastor Jasper Newton Field persuaded the local Board of Trade to offer a donation of at least one hundred thousand dollars and forty acres of land.

The commission voted for Redlands on June twenty-seventh, nineteen oh seven, and nine faculty members held the first day of classes in the Redlands Baptist Church on September thirtieth, nineteen oh nine, with thirty-nine students. The university has been independent since the nineteen seventies, retains an informal relationship with American Baptist Churches USA, and today enrolls a few thousand students on a red-brick campus that still carries the feel of a classic residential liberal arts college, a reminder of the Baptist educators who bet on this orange-blossom town.