It’s the first and only U.S. research university to open in the 21st century. But how did UC Merced wind up… in Merced? The story behind the campus, today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots.
Let’s go back to the mid 1980’s. California’s population was booming. But the state hadn’t built a new campus of the University of California since 1965, when UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz opened. Attention turned to the San Joaquin Valley, which lacked a UC campus, and had low educational attainment. In 1988, the legislature authorized a new campus for the Valley – but where to build it? The Regents looked at dozens of locations across the region but eventually narrowed it down to three sites – two in the Fresno area, and one along Lake Yosemite in a rural area near Merced.
One of the Fresno sites was northeast of Clovis along Highway 168 at Academy. The other was just across the San Joaquin River from Fresno, along Highway 41, in the area known as Rio Mesa. The Academy site had issues with numerous archeological sites that would be disturbed or destroyed with development. The Rio Mesa site in Madera County had a convenient location, but also had uncertain water supplies.
Finally in 1995, the UC Regents selected Merced as the site for the new campus, on land donated by the Virgina Smith Trust. The final campus site wound up shifting slightly thanks to endangered fairy shrimp that lived in seasonal vernal pools in the area. The UC wound up preserving the habitat, and instead built the campus on a former golf course nearby. UC Merced welcomed its first class of undergraduates to the new campus in 2005.
