Sul Ross State University: The College That Grew a Town
Near Alpine, Texas
By nineteen twenty, Alpine had been sitting in the high desert of west Texas for nearly forty years, growing slowly, serving the ranching economy, connected to the rest of the world primarily by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Then the Texas Legislature funded a new college in the town, and Alpine's trajectory changed. Sul Ross State Normal College opened its doors in nineteen twenty, named for Lawrence Sullivan Ross, a former governor of Texas and Confederate general who had also served as president of Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College.
The school began as a teachers' college, training educators for the schools of west Texas, and it was built on Hancock Hill just above the center of town. Its classical revival buildings in red brick and white trim became the visual anchor of the city's skyline. The effect on Alpine was immediate and lasting.
Students meant population, population meant commerce, and commerce meant a town that could survive and grow. By nineteen twenty-seven, just seven years after the college opened, Alpine's population had climbed to three thousand residents. Today Sul Ross State University offers graduate programs, operates the Center for Big Bend Studies, and houses the Museum of the Big Bend on its six-hundred-acre campus.
The university remains the largest employer in Alpine and the organizing force around which much of the town's cultural and economic life continues to revolve.
