West Virginia University, founded in 1867, has a long and rich history as a land-grant university.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, offering land grants of 30,000 acres of federally owned land to each state that agreed to establish a college to teach agriculture and the “mechanic arts” (engineering).

The State of West Virginia was formed the following year and, shortly thereafter, the state’s legislature accepted the terms for the Morrill Act to raise the money to start the new land-grant college they called the Agricultural College of West Virginia.

In 1868, the school’s name was changed to West Virginia University.