Finding The Answer In The Woods
October 23, 2007 – 0:10 am
On Sunday, Scott Schwarzer and I decided to take advantage of the great fall weather and take a walk on the Appalachian Trail. We departed from Catawba Mountain, located off Route 311 in Roanoke County, at around 0730 hours and 9.5 hours later we walked out of the woods at Route 220 in Botetourt County.
The great thing about walking about 20 miles at one time is that you have plenty of time to ponder those thoughts and ideas that somehow get buried in your mind over time. Many of these unresolved questions can prove to be good fodder for blog entries as you will see in today’s posting.
I have had occasion to meet with several members of the faculty and administration of Virginia Tech over the years and the phrase “land grant college” has come up in the conversation on various occasions. I always meant to ask someone about this label but the situation never lent itself to the inquiry. For some reason, the question popped into my mind again during my weekend stroll on the AT so I decided to satisfy my curiosity by researching the issue and writing this blog article.
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts was a federal statute passed by Congress in 1862 that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges. Under the act, each state received a total of 30,000 acres of federal land for each member of congress the state had as of the census of 1860. This land, or the money from its sale, was to be used toward establishing and funding the educational institutions to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts, as well as normal collegiate studies, so that “members of the working classes (us poor folks) might obtain a practical college education.” Initially, any state that was fighting on the Confederate side of the Civil War was not eligible to receive the land grants. However, this provision was later amended to include the former Confederates states like Virginia.
In 1872, Virginia purchased a small Methodist school in Montgomery County using the federal funds the Act. A new state-supported land grant military institute institution named the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College was incorporated on the property. The name was officially changed to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1944 as part of a short merger with Radford University.
Never one to leave federal money on the table, in 1882, Virginia also established the Virginia State University, located in Petersburg, its second land grant university.
So now I have the answer to my inquiry and I will “walk away” from my 20 mile hike with something other than sore feet. Of course, I still don’t understand that Hokie thing but I will save that for a future hike.