New Mexico Tech, School of Mines

In eighteen eighty-nine, Socorro was a mining boom town of about four thousand five hundred people, one of the largest settlements in New Mexico Territory. Silver strikes in the surrounding mountains had made it briefly prosperous, and the territorial legislature decided to plant a technical school here to train the mining engineers the territory's economy desperately needed. The New Mexico School of Mines was established by legislative act in eighteen eighty-nine.

Funding delays held up construction, and classes didn't begin until September of eighteen ninety-three, when two faculty members welcomed seven students into a single building. The silver boom eventually bust, but the school outlasted the mines. Today, now called New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, it is a small university focused on science and engineering, and its Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center is known for explosives research and training.