Sul Ross State opened in Alpine in June 1920 with 77 students, created to bring higher education to the remote, mountainous Big Bend. It grew from a normal college into a university in 1969, gave birth to the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, and became the region's cultural anchor. Its hillside campus holds Depression-era stone buildings put up with New Deal money, a regional museum, and one of Texas's quirkiest landmarks: a school desk perched atop the hill behind campus. This walk covers the historic core and ends with a short, rocky hike up Hancock Hill, so wear sturdy shoes and carry water at this high-desert elevation of roughly 4,500 feet.
About this site
Sul Ross State University is a public college or university in Alpine, Brewster County.
The site sits at 30.3630, -103.6516 near Alpine. The nearest cataloged historic site is Ross, General Lawrence "Sul" (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Museum of the Big Bend, Nolte-Rooney House, and J. C. Bird.
The Texas Legislature authorized a state normal college at Alpine in 1917, building on the Alpine Summer Normal School that had trained teachers there since 1910, and named it for Lawrence Sullivan Ross, the former governor and Confederate general who later led Texas A&M. The school opened on June 14, 1920, under President Thomas J. Fletcher with 77 students from 31 communities. It became Sul Ross State Teachers College in 1923, awarded its first bachelor's degrees in 1925, and started graduate work in 1930. During World War II the campus hosted Navy pilot training and a Women's Army Corps training school that brought more than 1,500 trainees to Alpine. Renamed Sul Ross State College in 1949 and Sul Ross State University in 1969, it remains the main university for the vast Big Bend region, with branch programs in Del Rio, Uvalde and Eagle Pass. The university is known for the Museum of the Big Bend, its Center for Big Bend Studies and Borderlands Research Institute, and its role as the birthplace of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association.
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