New Mexico State University, Land Grant in the Desert

New Mexico State University in Las Cruces was founded in eighteen eighty-eight, before New Mexico was even a state, as Las Cruces College, a small private school. The next year it became the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, which the territory designated as its land-grant institution under the Morrill Land-Grant Act. The federal government gave territories land to fund agricultural and mechanical colleges, and this college became the territory's designated land-grant institution.

Early classes were held in rented adobe rooms downtown, and the campus later moved to its current site south of the city. NMSU has grown into the flagship research university of southern New Mexico, with particular strengths in aerospace engineering, agricultural science, and chile pepper research. The Chile Pepper Institute here maintains hundreds of varieties and has developed some of the most widely grown commercial chile strains in New Mexico, including the NuMex Big Jim, once certified as the world's largest chile pepper variety.