Old Main: Wyoming's Territorial University

Wyoming was still a territory in eighteen eighty-six, four years away from statehood, when its legislature established a university in Laramie. The Masons laid the cornerstone on September twenty-seventh, eighteen eighty-six. Construction was finished by September first, eighteen eighty-seven, and five days later, forty-two students walked in to meet five faculty members.

The building they entered held everything: classrooms, laboratories, the library, the administration offices, and an auditorium, all under one roof with a four-story octagonal tower. From the first day, both the students and the faculty included women, a deliberate choice in a territory that had granted women the right to vote in eighteen sixty-nine. Old Main is still standing on the University of Wyoming campus today, the oldest building on the grounds.

The tower was eventually removed, but the rest of the original structure survives as a reminder that Wyoming built its university before it built its state.