University of Arizona Office of the President records

This Collection contains all of the surviving manuscript materials from the files of the first five Presidents of the University. There are, obviously and unfortunately, many missing letters and related docuemtns, lost or destroyed before this assortment reached the Library. The user should remain aware of this fact.

There are also other manuscript materials in Special Collections closely related to this collection, chiefly the following:

The establishment of both the University of Arizona and the Agricultural Experiment Station was linked in a rather complex and overlapping way. While the University was "established" in 1885 by Legislative action, and ground was broken in 1887 for a building ("Old Main") designated as the School of Mines, it was the prospect of government funds (through the Hatch Act), granted annually to state schools of agriculture, which influenced the Board of Regents to create a sudden School of Agriculture. Frank A. Gulley, the first paid faculty member, was appointed Dean of this unborn School in 1890. In the months preceeding the opening of the University in the autumn of 1891, he selected the faculty, oversaw the completion and furnishing of the first buildings, equipped the laboratory for the Experiment Station, selected sites for the field Stations, and issued the first publications. While not formally designated "President" of the University, he carried out many of the activities and responsibilities of that office, and his papers will be found in the above-mentioned Experiment Station material. His counterpart in the School of Mines, Theodore B. Comstock, employed by Gulley in 1891, later became the fist official President of the University.

Other related collections are:

In addition are various early financial and student records, as well as the minutes of the Board of Regents.