Nacogdoches · Nacogdoches County · Public · Official site
Texas campuses and the stories they hold.
About the campus
Stephen F. Austin State University opened in 1923 in Nacogdoches, one of the oldest towns in Texas, and moved onto this wooded campus the following year. Its grounds, once part of Thomas J. Rusk's homestead, are dotted with more state historical markers than most Texas campuses can claim. This walk heads north from a 1936 replica of a Spanish-era stone house, passes the home of a celebrated poet who taught here, circles the original 1920s hall and its plazas, and ends at a logging locomotive that recalls the East Texas timber industry the university's forestry program grew up alongside.
About this site
Stephen F. Austin State University is a public college or university in Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County.
The site sits at 31.6192, -94.6487 near Nacogdoches. The nearest cataloged historic site is Old Stone Fort (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Christ Episcopal Church, Oil in Nacogdoches County, 100th Anniversary, and Karle Wilson Baker.
Texas lawmakers authorized a normal college named for Stephen F. Austin in 1917, and Nacogdoches, one of the oldest towns in the state, won the locating contest with a donation of land that included much of the homestead of Texas Revolution figure Thomas J. Rusk. When the United States entered World War I the Legislature pulled the school's funding, and money was not restored until 1921, so Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College did not open until September 18, 1923, when 158 students began classes in borrowed Nacogdoches public-school rooms under founding president Alton W. Birdwell. Classes moved onto the new campus in 1924, and the teams took the name Lumberjacks, a nod to the Piney Woods timber country around Nacogdoches. A graduate division followed in 1937, and the school dropped "Teachers" from its name in 1949 before becoming Stephen F. Austin State University in 1969. Forestry grew into a signature strength after the U.S. Forest Service placed its East Texas forest experiment station at the college in 1945. For the 1936 Texas Centennial a replica of Antonio Gil Y'Barbo's 18th-century stone house was built on campus as the Stone Fort Museum, though a campus master plan approved in 2026 proposes relocating it. After decades as one of the few Texas public universities outside any university system, SFA joined The University of Texas System in 2023, the year it marked its centennial.
See this site and every marker, cemetery, courthouse, museum and landmark across Texas on one live map — find what's near you, get directions, and check in as you roam.
