Happy birthday UC Davis

UC Davis's freshman class this year are the centennial class. The university opened 100 years ago.

Back then, it was not a university, but rather a farm extension of UC Berkeley intended for training students on modern farming techniques. Students went here for a semester or so in their junior year. There was agriculture in Berkeley as well but the weather is so different here they wanted a Central Valley location for an extension station. They also wanted a location that was accessible by train from both Berkeley and Sacramento. The 780 acres of land they bought cost the state $104,000.

When the legislature picked what was then "Davisville" as the spot for the university, the people of nearby Woodland, our county seat 8 miles to the north, were horrified. Woodland was at the time a very prosperous town; in fact a San Francisco newspaper named Woodland the wealthiest town in the U.S., per capita. (It has some lovely Victorian architecture, but nowadays Woodland is not the highest-income part of Yolo County.)

Students completed a four year program at UCD starting in 1922, and it was separated from UC Berkeley in 1952. The '60s saw the graduate school, law school and med school established.

Yesterday there was a street fair as part of the celebration, which Douglas and I attended.