Ten Thousand Texans Came Before Kingsville's College Even Opened

Kingsville's college drew a crowd before it drew a class. On March 21, 1925, an estimated 10,000 Texans came to the cornerstone ceremony for the Main Building, now Manning Hall. The university's timeline shows how large that moment felt in a young South Texas town.

South Texas State Teachers College opened on June 8 with 276 students. Its first campus included liberal arts, education, industry and commerce, and military science. The name made the main job plain: train teachers for the region while building a broader college around them.

Manning Hall still makes that beginning visible. Kingsville may first read as ranch and railroad country, but the campus has kept a college-town rhythm here for more than a century. The big cornerstone crowd was an early sign that the school would belong to more than the students inside it.