McMurry University Campus Tour

McMurry opened on September 19, 1923, after Abilene Methodists raised $300,000 and gave the new college 42 acres south of downtown. Everything began in one building, the Administration Building now called Old Main, and the campus grew outward through the Depression and the postwar veteran boom. This walk, drawn from the university's own centennial tour, visits Old Main and its restored auditorium, a Depression-era rock garden, the War Hawk statue, the Radford tower, a dorm named for the World War II dead, the historical marker, and the park where the homecoming bonfire burns.

McMurry University opened in Abilene on September 19, 1923, after local Methodists raised $300,000 and donated 42 acres south of downtown. Drawn from the university's own centennial tour, this walk shows how a one-building college grew through the Depression and the flood of veterans after World War II, and how its students have marked their traditions along the way.

Everything started in Old Main, designed by Abilene architect David S. Castle and finished just in time for opening day, when it held labs, the library, classrooms and an auditorium at once. That auditorium sat unused as storage for about half a century before a campaign begun in 2014 brought it back as Matthews Auditorium. Out on the grounds, Terry Gilbreth's 1991 statue Sacred Wind shows a warrior with a Harris hawk on his shoulder, a figure that took on new meaning when McMurry's teams became the War Hawks in 2011.

The Radford Student Life Building, with its auditorium and bell tower, was paid for by Bessie Radford's postwar gifts and once held everything from a bowling alley to a dance floor; campus lore says her ghost explains the creaks. Wah Wahtaysee Park, named for an invitation-only women's pep squad founded in 1926, is where the homecoming bonfire burns each year, and in 2022 it was chosen as the site of the Centennial Iris Garden.

It is a short, personal walk through a century of small-college Texas history.