Southern Utah University: Built by the Community
Near Cedar City, Utah
Southern Utah University was built by its community before the community knew quite what they were building. In eighteen ninety-seven, the Utah state legislature voted to establish a branch normal school in Cedar City, a teacher-training institution meant to serve the remote settlements of southern Utah. The vote was the easy part. The funding was not generous.
When the new school needed its first building, the people of Cedar City built it themselves. Men from the town and surrounding farms hauled logs down from Cedar Mountain in the middle of winter, pulling timber through snow over distances that would have seemed impractical if there had been any other option. Women donated labor, food, and materials. Local businesses contributed what they could. The result was Old Main, a modest red-brick structure completed in eighteen ninety-eight, which still stands on campus today as the oldest building at the university.
The school changed its name and expanded its mission several times. It became a branch of Utah State Agricultural College in nineteen thirteen, a four-year liberal arts college in nineteen sixty-eight, and finally a full university in nineteen ninety-one under its current name. Today Southern Utah University enrolls more than twelve thousand students and offers programs across engineering, the sciences, business, and the performing arts. The relationship between the university and the Utah Shakespeare Festival gives theater students access to one of the most active Shakespeare companies in the country. The town that hauled winter logs to build its own school ended up with one of the most distinctive small universities in the American West.
