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Show " , - . if' ' Ui ..-. ''" '4t ' - vu--- i&vv; Southern Utah State College students, inset, attend the state's newest four-year institution. The I SUSC campus is a blend of traditional older buildings and many new modern structures, such as the pictured Physical Education Building. Southern Utah State is Growing I It may sound odd, but Southern Utah State College (which was founded way back in 1897) is the newest four-year college in Utah. In 1965 Southern Utah State College severed all previous ties to Utah State University and became the state's sixth four-year baccalaureate degree de-gree granting institution. Over the years, nothing has come easily to SUSC. From the very first Southern Utah State has had to struggle. Even the site of the college was determined only after bitter competition among several southern Utah communities. Once Cedar City was chosen as the site (and at that time Cedar City was only a two-store village with about 300 men and boys mostly employed in farming and ranching), the struggle only increased in intensity. Late in December of 1897, the Utah State Attorney General sent word that unless a state-owned building was completed in time for school to start the following September, Septem-ber, Cedar City would lose the right to be the home of the new institution. In an almost unbelievable dead-of-winter logging operation, oper-ation, lumber was hauled from the mountains (up to 10,000 feet in elevation) east of Cedar City. A local historian wrote of the venture: "It was the dead of winter, and there were no building materials left in town. They had no money, and . . . they were miles from the railway terminal in Milford. The only available project they could begin at once was to send volunteers thirty-five miles into the mountains to get out the lumber that had been left . . . when the snow began to fall. "Two parties of men left Cedar City . . ., one on January 5, 1898, to break trail and load the lumber. Caught in a heavy snow storm, the ', men barely escaped with their ; lives . . . Only under the most : urgent pleading , '. . would then even consent to go back. ' ' The first graduating class from what was to eventually become Southern Utah State College received diplomas in June of 1900. Their school then called the Branch Normal School functioned under the University of Utah. Since then, the control shifted to USU, then finally back to SUSC as an independent indepen-dent institution. SUSC has functioned under four different differ-ent names, causing an identity problem. Since 1953, SUSC has grown in enrollment from 360 students stu-dents to just under 2,000 students. Enrollment predictions predic-tions for the fall .of 1976 indicate a student body which will break the 2,000 barrier. SUSC is a liberal arts, sciences and teacher education institution which also offers pre-professional training in engineering, medicine, law and veterinary medicine.-- A c number of one- and two-year vocational-technical programs are also taught. |