East Texas A&M began in 1889 as a one-man private teachers' college run by Kentucky educator William L. Mayo in the town of Cooper. When fire destroyed that school in 1894, Mayo moved it 16 miles to the railroad town of Commerce, and the state bought it in 1917, the same day he died. Under a string of names, from East Texas State to Texas A&M-Commerce, it grew into a regional university. This walk visits the college's state marker, its oldest tradition, a statue of its most famous graduate, a World War II memorial stadium, the old presidents' home, and the founder's grave.
About this site
East Texas A&M University is a public college or university in Commerce, Hunt County. It is one of 2 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Hunt County.
The site sits at 33.2454, -95.9112 near Commerce. The nearest cataloged historic site is East Texas State University (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Methodism in Commerce, President's House, and W. L. Mayo Gravesite.
East Texas A&M began in 1889 as the personal project of Kentucky-born educator William L. Mayo, who opened a private teachers' school in Cooper, in Delta County. When the original building burned in 1894, Commerce offered land and cash to lure the school, and it reopened there as East Texas Normal College, helped by the town's rail links to Dallas, Paris and beyond. Mayo led the college until his death in 1917, by which time tens of thousands of students had passed through and it had become one of the state's leading sources of public-school teachers. That same year, under a new state law, the state normal-school regents bought the campus from Mayo's estate, making it the public East Texas State Normal College; it became a teachers college in 1923, began graduate work in 1935, and took the names East Texas State College in 1957 and East Texas State University in 1965, after launching its first doctoral program in 1962. The university integrated in 1964 on orders from its board of regents. After surviving mid-1980s proposals to close it, helped by a bus trip that carried some 450 supporters to the Capitol, the school joined the Texas A&M University System in the mid-1990s as Texas A&M University–Commerce. In November 2024, after alumni pushed back against a proposal to call it 'Texas A&M–Dallas,' the regents renamed it East Texas A&M University, restoring the regional name its students had favored since 1996. Today it is an R2 research university with a large rural campus in Commerce, additional sites in the Dallas area, and a long-standing reputation in teacher education.
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