The University of Texas at El Paso began in 1914 as the State School of Mines and Metallurgy, and after a 1916 fire drove it from its first site it rebuilt on this hillside above the Rio Grande. The new buildings borrowed their sloping walls and wide eaves from the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, a look suggested by the first dean's wife after she saw photographs in National Geographic, and the university has kept that style for more than a century. Along the way the school became the Texas College of Mines, then Texas Western College, whose 1966 basketball team won a national title with an all-Black starting lineup, and finally UTEP in 1967. This walk climbs from the first building through the centennial plaza and its Bhutanese temple to the museum, the desert gardens, and the stadium set into the mountainside.
University of Texas at El Paso (College & University)
Texas campuses and the stories they hold.
University of Texas at El Paso is a public college or university in El Paso, El Paso County. It is one of 5 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in El Paso County.
The site sits at 31.7720, -106.5057 near El Paso. The nearest cataloged historic site is Old Main (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include University of Texas at El Paso, Centennial Museum, and Fort Bliss, Old.
UTEP began with Senate Bill 183, signed in April 1913, which created the State School of Mines and Metallurgy at a time when El Paso was a hub of Southwestern mining and smelting. Classes opened in 1914 in former El Paso Military Institute buildings on the Lanoria Mesa beside Fort Bliss, which local backers known as the Eighty Founders had bought for the school, but a 1916 fire destroyed the main building and the school moved to its present hillside site above the Rio Grande, facing Ciudad Juárez. Kathleen Worrell, wife of dean Steve Worrell, had been struck by photographs of Bhutan's monastery-fortresses in a 1914 issue of National Geographic, and her idea became the model for the first buildings, drawn up by Charles Gibson and completed by architect Henry Trost; sloping walls, deep overhanging roofs and bands of decorative color have marked campus buildings ever since. The school became the College of Mines and Metallurgy of the University of Texas in 1920, broadened into business, education, liberal arts and science after 1927, and was renamed Texas Western College in 1949. After a 1955 lawsuit, Texas Western became, according to the Handbook of Texas, the first senior public college in the state to admit Black students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and in 1966 Don Haskins's basketball team won the NCAA title with an all-Black starting lineup, beating an all-white Kentucky team 72-65. The school took its current name in 1967, began its first doctoral program in 1974, and in 2018 earned Carnegie R1 status, the first former mining school in the nation to do so. Today it is also known as a leading Hispanic-serving institution on the U.S.-Mexico border, home to the Sun Bowl stadium.
“University of Texas at El Paso” names 2 distinct records in El Paso County. This page is the college & university in El Paso. The others:
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