West Texas A&M University

West Texas A&M opened on September 20, 1910, as West Texas State Normal College, one of Texas's state-funded teacher-training schools, with 152 students, 16 faculty members and Robert B. Cousins as its first president. Its lone Administration Building, which held every classroom, lab and office, burned on March 25, 1914, so classes moved into churches and other borrowed spaces until a replacement building, today's Old Main, opened in 1916. That same year the college hired a young Georgia O'Keeffe to lead its art department, a post she held until early 1918, years before she became one of the defining figures of American modernism. The school awarded its first four-year degrees in 1919, became West Texas State Teachers College in 1923, and in the early 1930s welcomed the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society's new museum onto its grounds; that museum grew into a major regional collection, but WT closed the building in March 2025 after a state fire marshal's inspection found safety problems, and in December 2025 the museum's historical society announced it would not reopen on the campus. After World War II the college swelled with veterans, took the name West Texas State College in 1949, and became West Texas State University in 1963, the year after Helen Neal became its first Black graduate. Its football program of that era was famous for producing professional wrestlers such as Dusty Rhodes, Terry Funk and Stan Hansen, and in 1984 the athletic program moved from Division I to Division II and the Lone Star Conference. The school became part of the Texas A&M University System on September 1, 1990, and switched to the West Texas A&M name three years later, in 1993. Today it is the northernmost university in the A&M System, known for agriculture, business and the fine arts in the Texas Panhandle.

Sources: en.wikipedia.orgtshaonline.orgwtamu.eduamarillotribune.org