LibGuides: MSU Campus Plants Research Guide: History

Guide Updates

Greetings!

Due to the change in the recent change in catalog infrastructure, many of the hyperlinks in this guide were broken. Be assured they are being repaired and the guide updated in the process. If you find links that you need corrected immediately, please email Suzanne at the email provided, state which links you need, and I'll correct them ASAP.

Go Green!

Overview

The Michigan Agricultural College campus was once Michigan wilderness. The college founders designed the campus to have a park-like feel, and soon established campus buildings and structures connected by winding roads, not straight, unnatural streets. Plants, trees, and velds remained on the campus grounds and served as living laboratories to the flora and fauna of the region. This guide is to help locate the many resources that identify and track the plant life of the MAC/MSU campus. Listed below are works that describe the campus in general, including its initial designers and layout to how it appears in recent history.

History of the Michigan agricultural college and biographical sketches of trustees and professors by W. J. Beal
Call Number: MSU Collection, LD3245.M28 B4 1915a
Publication Date: 1915
Multiple print copies and online
Fifty years of forestry at Michigan State College by Michigan State College.
Call Number: SD254.M5 A4
Publication Date: 1953
Michigan State: The first hundred years, 1855-1955 by Madison Kuhn
Call Number: MSU Collection, LD3245.M28 K8
Publication Date: 1955
From an oak opening : a record of the development of the campus park of Michigan State University, 1855-1969 by Harold W. Lautner
Call Number: MSU Collection, LD3245.M28 L385 1978a
Publication Date: 1978
Green tree campus of Michigan State University : 1968-1988 by Mark Krefman
Call Number: online
Publication Date: 1989
Seen as a follow-up to "From an Oak Opening" by Harold W. Lautner

Creating an Idyllic Space: Nature, Technology, and Campus Planning at the Michigan Agricultural College, 1850 to 1975 / Ted Moore
Michigan Historical Review. Vol. 35, No. 2, FALL 2009. p.1-25
The Michigan Agricultural College. The Earlier History of the College up to its Reorganization in 1861 / Theophilus Capen Abbot
President Abbot. 1884. The Michigan Agricultural College. The Earlier History of the College up to its Reorganization in 1861. Pioneer collections by Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Vol. 6. pp. 115-136.
Call no.: F561 .M47 v. 6
Note - this is an article by Theophilus Capen Abbot [President from 1862-1885]. It does not describe the campus and plants per se, but does describe the early history of the establishment of the college, classes, students, faculty and staff. Page 124 begins the section "Site Selection" for the new college.