University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

With only 11,000 inhabitants in 1880, the pueblo of Los Angeles convinced the state government to establish a State Normal School in Southern California. Enthusiastic citizens contributed between $2 and $500 to purchase a site, and on August 29, 1882, the Los Angeles Branch of the State Normal School welcomed its first students in a Victorian building that had been erected on the site of an orange grove.By 1914 Los Angeles had grown to a city of 350,000, and the school moved to new quarters�a Hollywood ranch off a dirt road that later became Vermont Avenue. In 1919, the school became the Southern Branch of the University of California and offered two years of instruction in Letters and Science. Third- and fourth-year courses were soon added; the first class of 300 students was graduated in 1925, and by 1927 the Southern Branch had earned its new name: University of California at Los Angeles. (The name was changed again in 1958 to University of California, Los Angeles.)