McCormick Observatory: Jefferson's Deferred Dream

Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia with an astronomy program in mind, but a proper observatory sat unbuilt for sixty years after his death.

The gift that finally made it happen came from Leander James McCormick, a Rockbridge County native whose family had patented the mechanical reaper, the harvesting machine that transformed American agriculture. In eighteen eighty-two, McCormick donated funds and ordered a twenty-six-inch refracting telescope from the finest lens-maker in the country, Alvan Clark and Sons of Massachusetts. Construction atop Observatory Mountain was completed in eighteen eighty-four, and the telescope was dedicated on April thirteenth, eighteen eighty-five.

At that moment it was the second-largest refracting telescope in the world. Astronomers here used it to measure the proper motions of stars, their slow drift across the sky, for decades. The domed Romanesque building and its historic refractor are still in use today for teaching and public outreach.