The history of the University of California, Riverside, or UCR, started in 1907 when UCR was the University's Citrus Experiment Station. By the 1950s, the University had established a teaching-focused liberal arts curriculum at the site, in the spirit of a small liberal arts college, but California's rapidly growing population made it necessary for the Riverside campus to become a full-fledged general campus of the UC system, and it was so designated in 1959.
The University of California Citrus Experiment Station
The Rubidoux Laboratory The Southern California "citrus belt" first emerged in the 1870s, and within two decades stretched eastward from Pasadena to Redlands beneath the foothills of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains. It originated from experimental navel orange plantings first conducted in Riverside, from cuttings introduced from Brazil. John Henry Reed, a retired school superintendent and dry goods merchant from Ohio turned citrus grower, is credited with first proposing the establishment of a scientific experiment station specifically for citrus research in Southern California, and organized a vigorous lobbying effort of the local citrus industry towards that end. As founding member and chair of the Riverside Horticultural Club's experimental committee, he also pioneered a collaborative approach to conducting experimental plantings, and published more than 150 semitechnical and popular papers on citrus and other subjects between 1895 and 1915.
Riverside California State Assembly member Miguel Estudillo worked with Reed and a committee of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce to draft Assembly Bill 552, which provided for a pathological laboratory and branch experiment station in Southern California. On March 18, 1905, a legislative board of commissioners was appropriated $30,000 to select the site and implement the measure. On February 14, 1907, the University of California Board of Regents established the UC Citrus Experiment Station on of land on the east slope of Mt. Rubidoux in Riverside. However, the University's decision to concentrate on the development of the University Farm in Davis led to only two initial staff being assigned to the CES, only one of whom, Ralph E. Smith, a plant pathologist from Berkeley, was a scientist. Dubbed the Rubidoux Laboratory, the initial purpose of the station was to concentrate on various soil management problems such as fertilization, irrigation, improvement of crops.
Expansion and relocation to Box Springs In 1913, a record killing freeze in Southern California caused a panic throughout the $175 million citrus industry, which demanded more state-funded agricultural research. Three acts of the California Legislature in 1913 provided $185,000 to fund an enlarged CES to be located in one of the eight southern counties. Developers of the San Fernando Valley, recently opened for settlement by the 1914 completion of the Owens Valley aqueduct, lobbied intensively for the CES to be relocated there.
Herbert John Webber, a professor of plant breeding from Cornell University and newly appointed director of the Citrus Experiment Station, considered various site proposals but ultimately worked with the Riverside Chamber of Commerce, city officials, and local growers to assist in drafting and endorsing a proposal for the CES to be relocated to its current site on of land from downtown Riverside, adjacent to the Box Springs Mountains. On December 14, 1914 the UC Regents approved the selection, news of which caused jubilation in downtown Riverside: "The entire city turned into the streets, the steam whistle on the electrical plant blew for 15 minutes, and the Mission Inn bells were rung in celebration." It was, according to Reed as quoted in the Riverside Daily Press: "...the most important day that has occurred in all the history of Riverside."
The new station was to be governed autonomously under Webber's direction. He spent the next few years personally recruiting the founding research team, eleven scientists organized into six divisions of agricultural chemistry, plant physiology, plant pathology, entomology, plant breeding, and orchard management. Webber also initiated the development of the Citrus Variety Collection on planted with approximately 500 species of citrus from around the world, which grew to become the greatest such variety collection internationally. He also planted hundreds of other subtropical crops, including 70 varieties of avocado, imported from Mexico, that produced more than 45,000 hybrids through controlled pollination. (He also helped found the California Avocado Association in 1914 and served as its president for two years, and organized the annual citrus institute of the National Orange Show in San Bernardino and the Date Growers Institute of Coachella Valley.)
Early architecture
The original laboratory, farm, and residence buildings on the Box Springs site was designed by Lester H. Hibbard of Los Angeles, a graduate of the University of California School of Architecture, in association with a colleague, H.B. Cody. Built at a cost of $165,000, the architecture followed the Mission Revival style suggesting the Spanish colonial heritage of Southern California. The site, which became the early nucleus of the UCR campus, eventually opened in 1917, although the Division of Agricultural Chemistry continued to occupy lab space at the Rubidoux site.
The early years
After the 1945 passage of the GI Bill, a massive influx of former servicemen began to enter college and strained the capacities of many state university systems throughout the United States. While this wave was expected to eventually subside by the early 1950s, state and federal studies released in the late 1940s all projected massive demand for access to higher education in California in the near future.Stadtman, Verne A. The University of California, 1868-1968, p. 372. The UC system was then composed only of established campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles which were already operating near capacity. Davis was then still a primarily agricultural campus, while Santa Barbara State had just entered the UC system in 1944.
In 1947, the Board of Regents and an Education Committee of the State Legislature appointed a committee to conduct a large-scale study of California's needs which was dubbed the Strayer Committee (after its chair, George D. Strayer, professor emeritus of Teachers College, Columbia University). As the Strayer Committee was empowered to make recommendations regarding the establishment of any new state campuses, a group of Riverside citrus growers and civic leaders, including many Cal (Berkeley) alumni, formed the Citizens University Committee (CUC) to lobby for a small liberal arts college attached to the UC Citrus Experiment Station. After diligent lobbying by the CUC, which sent gifts of oranges and grapefruit to every member of the Legislature, the Strayer Committee recommended that Riverside become the location for the fourth UC undergraduate campus. (It also recommended that the existing College of Agriculture at Davis be expanded to serve other kinds of undergraduates besides agriculture students.) Riverside State Assemblyman John Babbage drafted Senate Bill 512, which allocated $6 million for the construction of the new college. Governor Earl Warren signed the bill approving the establishment of the College of Letters and Science in Riverside in 1949, after reducing its initial allocation for construction to $4 million.
That same year, the Regents appointed a 13-member faculty committee to plan the expansion of the existing campuses at Davis and Riverside, headed by Harry B. Walker of the College of Agriculture at Davis. Though it was decided that the new college at Riverside would be a separate institution from the CES, with no undergraduate work in agriculture planned, it was also decided that the Riverside provost would report to the president of the UC through the Vice-president of the statewide College of Agriculture, to whom the director of the CES also reported.Stadtman, Verne A. "The University of California, 1868-1968," page 360. Gordon S. Watkins, then dean of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA, was a member of this initial planning committee, and UC President Robert Gordon Sproul requested him to oversee the organization of the College of Letters and Science at Riverside. Watkins accepted the job and started five years of planning, faculty recruitment, and building construction. The onset of the Korean War delayed construction, and the CUC continued to lobby for basic resources such as steel and concrete to build the new campus. Anticipating an initial enrollment of 1,000, Watkins ordered the initial campus built for a maximum capacity of 1,500 students. Not anticipating the need for graduate work, Watkins focused on recruiting many young, new Ph.D.s into junior faculty positions, rather than already established researchers. He became provost of the Riverside campus and presided at its opening with 65 faculty and 131 students in February 1954, remarking "Never have so few been taught by so many."Martinez, Richard. "700 Join in UCR's Second Founder's Day Celebration." Riverside Press Enterprise, October 7, 1987.
Under Watkins, Riverside got off to a most auspicious start. Watkins was able to attract many excellent faculty members to Riverside with good pay, a relatively light teaching load, and no obligation to conduct research. The Claremont Colleges were particularly frustrated at their new public competitor, especially when Watkins recruited W. Conway Pierce from Pomona College to serve as Riverside's first dean of physical sciences. In turn, Riverside's high-quality faculty combined with low tuition meant that during the 1950s, Riverside briefly led all UC locations (including Berkeley) in terms of the quality of its incoming freshmen classes, and it was the only public college listed on a 1956 ranking of the 10 best liberal arts colleges in the United States. Among the most brilliant of Riverside's early students was Charles E. Young, who would go on to become UCLA's longest-serving chancellor.
Mascot history
When the university opened in February 1954, many students wanted a bear symbol in keeping with the traditional ursine mascots at UC Berkeley and UCLA. The founding editors initially named the student newspaper "The Cub", and out of a total of 67 names entered in a contest to pick the mascot, "Cubs" was the most popular; however, many felt that this name would permanently denigrate the campus as a "little brother" of UCLA and Berkeley. In November 1954, the men's basketball team championed freshman Donna Lewis' suggestion of "Hylanders" as a write-in candidate in a run-off between "Cubs" and "Grizzlies." The corrected name won easily, as Provost Watkins was noted for speaking with a Welsh accent, and the UCR campus was located at the highest elevation among all UC schools. Also, the Box Springs Mountains were known as the Highlands.
The Spieth administration and designation as a general UC campus, 1950s and 1960s At the time of the Strayer Report, the Regents did not believe California could afford multiple high-quality public universities. They intended that the newer campuses would become specialized. Riverside was designed to provide a high-quality liberal arts education, but would not support graduate-level research. However, the Regents soon found that continually increasing enrollment demands at Berkeley and Los Angeles required continuous expansion of the university at all levels and at all locations. The liberal arts college model, implemented by the Regents as a money-saving measure, was ultimately deemed too small and costly in light of the needs of California's rapidly growing population.