(gentle orchestral music) (clock ticking) (gentle orchestral music) (hooves clumping) - [Narrator] 150 years ago, a great experiment began, but not all believed it could succeed.

- [William] A school for the promotion of agricultural and mechanic arts, located in the Great American Desert, with nothing in sight more suggestive of enlightened civilization than dry prairies, dotted with cactus patches, bestrewn with bleaching bones of departed buffalo, and inhabited by prairie dogs, coyotes and buzzards, with only here and there a little oasis along the creek bottoms, is an enterprise both amusing and pathetic.

- [Narrator] While newcomers saw the unforgiving landscape inhospitable, there were others who flourished on this land and considered it sacred.

(hawk cries) (woman speaks in foreign language) - Before this land was given to anybody, it was our ancestral home.

(dramatic orchestral music) For the Arapahoe people, our ancestral homeland is actually a place where all of our stories and our creation stories, our traditional knowledge comes from; the plants, the animals, our star knowledge, a lot of that history comes from this area.

(dramatic orchestral music) (upbeat bluegrass music) - After the discovery of gold in Colorado in the 1850s, there were simply more people coming in than could be accommodated in a peaceful way.

- It was exactly what my great-grandma had said, once people knew there was gold here, the exploration of gold took the land out of our hands.

- [Jason] Here at Fort Collins, though we had the northern Arapaho, who led by chief Friday, who want to establish their own reservation right here along the Poudre River.

(water trickling) - [Narrator] In 1861 an act of Congress declared Colorado as a Territory.

Eventually, Chief Friday and his people would be forced to move north to the Wind River Reservation.

(drum rolling) In 1861, as the Civil War raged and turmoil erupted in the United States, a group of congressmen focused on an ingenious plan, not for battle, but rather for education.

Vermont Representative Justin Smith Morrill led the charge.

- [Tony] Justin Morrill was the son of a blacksmith who had wanted to go to college, had never had that opportunity, and when the idea was presented to him to foster a bill around education for the working class children of the agricultural and industrial classes, he was very enthused about that.

- [Narrator] On July 2nd, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morrill land-grant Colleges Act.

Congress granted each state the equivalent of 30,000 acres of federal land to fund colleges.

- Fundamentally, at the core of the Morrill Act, was the idea, the quintessential American idea, that anyone with the talent and the motivation to earn a degree from a great university should have that opportunity.

- [Narrator] 69 land-grant colleges were initially founded to teach Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts.

While the north and south were being torn in half by war, the outpost of Camp Collins in the west was under siege, from a different threat.

(fanfare) - In 1st of June, 1864, what Ansel Watrous called a great body of water, came down from the mountains.

The Poudre River overflowed.

The camp was inundated.

Nobody died, but some of the soldiers just barely escaped with their lives.

So it was declared that they needed a new location on higher ground, so they chose the higher ground which became Fort Collins, and nobody quite knows why we went from Camp to Fort, except it just sounded a little more distinguished.

(gentle orchestral music) - [Narrator] In 1865 the Civil War ended and the southern states returned to the Union.

- Well, not surprisingly, the end of the war didn't eliminate racial tensions within America; we're still dealing and struggling with those to this very day.

But at that particular point in time there were concerns that the Southern States would still find ways to racially segregate and to not permit access.

So, the second Morrill Act brought in 19 historically black colleges and universities, tied those into the land-grant system and provided, even if everything else failed, a direct open door for African American students to attend a land-grant college.

(hooves clumping) (gentle music) - [Barbara] I think you really have to call them visionaries.

They saw a future that most other people didn't see.

(gentle music) - [Wade] There's always something special about Fort Collins and that's why I think it always had the Choice City label.

- [Narrator] But life here wasn't always as good.

- When Isabella Bird came here in 1872, she pronounced this little town positively disgusting.

She said it was full of flies and had coarse food, coarse people, coarse everything.

She didn't see why anybody would ever want to live here.

There was a serious drought between 1872 and 1875.

That's part of what the agricultural colleges were for, to help figure out better ways to deal with agricultural mishaps, agricultural catastrophes.

Nobody knew much about anything like irrigation or dealing with infestations.

- [Wayne] The interesting thing to me is that in the early to mid-1870s, you had plagues of grasshoppers came through.

- [Barbara] It was so bad that people would hang clothes out on clotheslines and the grasshoppers would eat them.

- [Wayne] It looked like the town of Fort Collins was gonna just go away.

It was just not going to succeed.

(door creaking) (intense orchestral music) - [Barbara] If Fort Collins was to survive, the land-grant college needed to come here.

(intense orchestral music) (gentle piano music) - There was a thought in several Colorado communities to be the home for this new university, but Fort Collins really stepped forward.

- [Narrator] In 1870, nearly six years before Colorado would become a state, Fort Collins was legislated as the official site of Colorado's State Agricultural College.

- Cities up and down the Front Range were popping up and disbanding and rising and falling.

Leaders of Fort Collins wanted to secure their future.

- There was a group of people, a man named Loveland for one, who were invested in having a train here from Denver.

The train would bring people.

It would bring goods.

It would take goods for trade.

And they considered it critically important.

- In 1877, the Colorado Central Railroad came and said, "Can we lay tracks through your town?

"Can we build a railroad?"

Well, duh.

(chuckles) "A rail connection with the trans-continental railroad?

"Please!

"What can we give you?

"We'll give you a right of way forever."

♪ All around the water tanks ♪ Waiting for a train - [Narrator] As fate would have it, William F. Watrous now led Colorado's first Board of Agriculture, a board of local farmers dedicated to building the college.

Watrous struck a deal with the railroad for $100, and the train began rolling through town.

(train horn tooting) - [Jared] It ran right through campus.

- And when I tell people that when that train came down the track on Mason Street, everybody cheered, they just laugh.

They can't even imagine it.

- Today we get stopped and swear at the long trains coming through.

And so, when people say, "Why don't we just move it out east "of town or move it somewhere else?"

(train rattling) The railroad doesn't have to move it.

They've got the right of way forever.

Historically, it was the town's savior actually.

(gentle jazz music) - [Narrator] In 1879, excitement was growing; the school had two buildings and was in search of its first president.

(gentle music) - They found at McKendree College, in Illinois, Elijah Edwards.

- [Jim] Elijah Edwards was here because they didn't know what else to look for in terms of a first president.

- [Narrator] He was a Civil War chaplain and a man of vast experience and faith, but he was about to face a host of challenges for which he was not fully equipped.

(gentle music) - [Gordon] The State Board of Agriculture, they began thinking, how do we begin building this little college?

They had models, fortunately, in Michigan, what we now know as Michigan State University, that was the land-grant there; they already had discussions and even arguments about, what do we offer?

- [Hansen] So you had a very strong lobby of agriculturalists, especially cattlemen, who said, "We should be teaching farming and not anything else."

- I have a sense that it wasn't formalized in its structure.

And maybe the best practices that we see in boards today weren't exactly followed by that state agricultural board.

- [Narrator] On the other hand, President Edwards believed the college should provide a broader and more diverse education.

The differing philosophies would be a defining struggle for the school.

- [Gordon] It was very shortly thereafter they hired two more gentlemen to round out the faculty of three to greet the very first students that were to start college on the 1st of September of 1879.

- [Narrator] Elijah Edward's two daughters were both enrolled along with a handful of other students.

(bell tolls) - But that handful grew to 10 and then 15 and 20 as people realized that college was operating and began sending their kids in.

- Women going to college was a whole new concept that very few people knew how to deal with.

There were maybe a dozen colleges in the whole country that admitted women.

And now here came these land-grant colleges, women could go.

- [Narrator] With changing times came a change in the name of the college.

In 1880, the State Agricultural College became Colorado Agricultural College.

(blues music) Understanding what could grow in Colorado was one of the main missions for the land-grant college.

Experimental crops were planted on the college farm to find out.

- [Gordon] They went and got various types of seed, planted some, part of the college farm with tobacco.

And they were able to actually grow tobacco out here in Fort Collins, Colorado.

I think the state board members, the men, they all probably got one of these cigars, fired it up and discovered that the tobacco tasted terrible.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Besides labor, the university required money.

Hay and crops were sold from the college farm to fund agricultural research.

Professor Ainsworth Blount managed the farm, and he began to share research with Colorado farmers.

These Farmer Institute meetings bridged the gap between farmers and educators and became the Cooperative Extension Service that exists today.

(dramatic music) - Part of the Extension Service's role and responsibility was to help those farmers understand the opportunities and the best practices that were associated with it.

And the Extension Service began to fit the bill.

It was unique in that it was a partnership too with the local communities.

- [Narrator] The Great Experiment was beginning to have the impact its founders had dreamed.

But its outreach was still limited.

- I think they realized right away that they needed to have some kind of living facilities to attract people to send their children up here to go to this agricultural college.

- [Narrator] Consequently, the board authorized the construction of Spruce Hall, and Edwards oversaw the operation.

After just one year at Fort Collins, Edwards fully sensed the frustration of his position.

In a letter to a friend, dated June 7th, 1880, he declared: - [Edwards] Have been here a year, and have been successful, though I shall not pledge myself to remain, unless I find a greater measure than now seems possible in schools of this class.

They are experiments at best, and experiments, I must confess, a little out of my line.

- [Narrator] Edwards would resign nearly two years later, and the Agriculture Board would begin its search for the next college president.

(dramatic music) Three consecutive presidents would forge the major foundation of the school over the next 27 years.

Charles L. Ingersoll, Alston Ellis, and Barton O. Aylesworth.

Beneath their distinguished mustaches, they shared other commonalities; all were ministers and articulate scholars with academic philosophies learned at mid-west colleges.

And, like their predecessor, Elijah Edwards, they would battle the school's board for a broader curriculum.

- It was a battle that took several, literally, decades to decide what direction they were gonna finally go with.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Dr. George Henry Glover, one of CAC's first graduates and leader of the new Department of Veterinary Science, realized that diseased beef and milk were infecting humans.

He fought to educate the public.

- He kind of did a very right in your face kind of thing.

Here's the horrible mess that you people are actually trying to consume as milk that is really a very badly infected substance that you wouldn't feed to anybody.

They a lot of times didn't understand how unsafe it was to have and the tuberculosis was spread that way.

- [Narrator] As a result, Dr. Glover drafted an ordinance for food inspections that became a model for cities across the nation.

It was food experimentation rather than inspection that created a boom in Colorado's economy at the time.

- We're fortunate that the Hatch Act passed in 1887.

And the Hatch Act gave birth to the Ag Experiment Stations around the state of Colorado.

- [Dora] Colorado is a word in Spanish.

It's not like, all of a sudden, Hispanic, Latino folks showed up.

When we think about the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, we can trace our roots back to that.

The greatest influx of Mexicanos, Mexican folks, to Fort Collins specifically, and Larimer county, was a result of the Sugar Beet Farming.

- The sugar beet industry was one of the things that became, literally, a mainstay for the economy of the state of Colorado by research that was done around at the various experiment stations growing different kinds of sugar beets and finding out which ones grew well.

And that turned out to be a big boon for the economy of the young state of Colorado.

There was a variety of wheat that became the kind of wheat consumed in bread products came out of Colorado Agricultural College.

- [Narrator] It was said that these two crops provided Colorado with more money in one year than all the mining that had ever been done in the state.

Education for all, under the Morrill Act, was paying off.

During President Ingersoll's first term, 24 of the 67 students enrolled were female.

Ingersoll felt it was important to hire a female faculty member.

Elizabeth Bell became the first, followed by her sister Maude.

Colorado soon became one of the first two states to grant women the right to vote.

- State of Wyoming actually were the very first, but Colorado was shortly right there behind 'em.

- [Narrator] It was in 1893, 27 years before the 19th Amendment in the United States.

- Women were the ones that made settlement possible.

They were strong, they were tough, they were resilient, they were brave.

They were remarkable.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Among the remarkable women was Eliza Routt, the state's first female voter, and wife of Colorado's governor.

Eliza hired her friend Theodosia Ammons, who shared her passion for women's equal rights and education.

Together, they built the foundation for the colleges of Domestic Economy, Home Economics and Consumer Science.

Virginia H. Corbett became the Dean of Women, further championing the rights of female students.

(upbeat music) Colorado Agricultural College had become a place of opportunity for many seeking a brighter future.

In 1891, Grafton St. Clair Norman became the first African American at the school.

- He enrolled right after the third president came and was hired, who was Alston Ellis.

Alston Ellis was an educator from Hamilton, Ohio.

It just so happened that Grafton was also from Hamilton, Ohio.

He was the quartermaster in the military department in the Corps of Cadets, which was a fairly high rank to hold.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] By 1892, military training as part of the land-grant tradition had been well established on campus.

As students mastered military drills, they sought new ways to test their physical strength and discipline.

- The students got together and they said, "We want to have athletics."

- [Narrator] Athletics grew, but the school's newly appointed president, Austin Ellis, was not a fan.

- [John] He thought they should be more interested in military or into other types of activities on the college farm.

But the students really wanted to play football.

(players shouting) (whistle blowing) (cheerful band music) - [Narrator] The first football game, on January 7th, 1893, presented the team with a unique challenge.

(cheerful band music) - The boys went down to Longmont to play Longmont Academy in what would be considered the very first football game, and they needed some way of identifying themselves.

They didn't have uniforms, so they stopped in a drugstore and they happened to have some green ribbon and some orange ribbon.

They bought enough of it to each pin on their shirts those two colors of ribbons.

That's where the colors of green and gold or green and orange happened.

(cheerful band music) - [Narrator] President Ellis continued to be unsupportive of athletics, especially football.

- After he departed, they brought in Barton Aylesworth.

But Dr. Aylesworth was very much opposite in the mindset.

- [Narrator] He supported sports and the region's first athletic conference.

(dramatic music) - So on Thanksgiving Day, 1899, the Aggies go up to Laramie for the very first, what we call the border war today.

(dramatic music) - The border war is one of the longest standing rivalries in the United States in football between Colorado State and Wyoming.

- [Narrator] During the first game, the rivalry almost ended before it began.

- There's an argument over the rules, and the Wyoming referee takes the rule book, slaps it out of the umpire's hand, and he says, "Damn with the rules!

"This game is over."

- [Narrator] The Colorado Aggies vowed to never play Wyoming again, but they did one year later.

The Aggies arose victorious, and a bitter rivalry began.

Under President Aylesworth, Athletics continued to excel and Durkee Athletic Field was built.

- [John] They played not just football there, but they had track and they had baseball, all on that one spot.

- [Narrator] Taking to the field was Alfred Johnson, the first African American athlete in Colorado Agricultural College history.

- The University of Denver saw that Alfred Johnson was gonna play against them and they said, "Nope, we're not gonna play him.

"We don't play against Black players."

And it caused a real problem within the entire Rocky Mountain region.

(player groans) - [Narrator] Perhaps the most celebrated team of the era was the women's basketball team, who in 1903 brought home the school's first championship in collegiate athletic competition.

(car engine roaring) The oval first took shape in 1910 as part of a nation-wide experiment.

- At that time, the United States was just getting into the automobile age, and across the country, the US Department of Agriculture was very interested in getting each of the land-grant schools, particularly, to do experimental work on trying to build roads using materials that were local.

- [Narrator] A road was built and quickly became the center of campus.

(cheerful guitar music) - It kind of had a romance about it, just because of the beauty and the shade of those big old trees, and the whole ambiance of the place.

(cheerful guitar music) - [Narrator] Thanks to arborists like Carl Jorgenson, many trees survive today at over 100 years old.

They remain silent witnesses to the rise of the Oval's historic buildings, under the leadership of CSU's longest serving president.

(gentle guitar music) (guitar blues music) - Charles Lory was here for 31 years, going from 1909 to 1940.

- [Narrator] As a farmer and educated physicist, he promoted both hands-on learning and classical academics.

"It is an old but true saying," he once asserted, "that there is as much culture "in a beet root as in a Greek root."

Lory's philosophy and down to earth persona won the trust of the Board of Agriculture, and he became the first president to expand education into liberal arts and beyond.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] In 1917, when male students were called to fight in World War I, the survival of the college and the nation relied on women.

- [Gordon] They knew right away when the United States entered the war that food production was going to be a very vital part of whether the Allies were gonna win the war or lose to Germany.

- [James] Many times it was women who began to steward the land.

- [Barbara] It was a horrible war.

- [Narrator] After Germany surrendered in 1918, soldiers returned to campus, bringing with them unseen enemies.

- Now they call it PTSD, but I would imagine that they must have come back so traumatized that it would have been very difficult for them to resume normal lives.

- [Narrator] Soldiers also suffered from the deadly 1918 flu.

The pandemic took over campus and the field house became an infirmary.

Over 15 million people died worldwide.

More than double those in the war.

(cheerful marching band music) The wounds of war began to ease with music and entertainment that came to campus.

Ticket prices were a staggering $2.

For those with more refined taste, the Army and ROTC provided a new resounding form of entertainment.

(cannon fires) - Kabam, we had a cannon!

And we're still using that till this day.

- [Narrator] Blasting Comatose the cannon was not the only way Fort Collins celebrated game-day victories however.

- They made a newsreel film of this 1919 game.

We just happened to absolutely annihilate CU in that game, which was great.

You had the fans walking down College Avenue all in a parade.

And then you also see the rarest of them all and that's our bear.

That was our mascot in 1919.

And only in 1919.

- [Narrator] A decade of unruly mascots paved the way for athletic legends to come.

(cheerful band music) (drum rolling) In 1936, Glenn Morris dominated the Decathlon at the Berlin Olympics.

- He grew up in a very hardscrabble life in the dust bowl era and came to CSU as a great student, but also a really phenomenal athlete.

- [Narrator] After winning gold, Morris won a spot on the Silver Screen.

- [Tony] He was a much better athlete than actor by any stretch of the imagination, and it's still considered maybe the worst of the Tarzan movies.

(Tarzan screams) - Good.

- Good, good.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] As Morris made headlines, the 31-year career of President Lory was drawing to a close.

Jovita Lobato was about to become the school's first Hispanic graduate, as Colorado Agricultural College became Colorado A&M in 1935.

(upbeat jazz music) Arriving at Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1939 was John Mosley.

- I didn't go up there just to play football and to wrestle.

I went up there to get an education.

(blues music) - He was the student body vice president twice at CSU.

Think about that.

He was one of, I believe, seven African Americans on campus, and at that time that was anything but an easy thing to be on a college campus or in American society.

- We stuck together, there was five of us that rented a house.

- They called themselves the lonesome boys.

- [John] We couldn't go into the restaurants.

We had to sit together in order to survive.

- [Blanche] He was very brave to be here.

- [Narrator] Mosley's friends feared for his safety on the football field and urged him not to play.

- I hate a quitter.

And throughout the football games I never stopped fighting.

- [Narrator] Before a game in Salt Lake City, a movie theater attempted to have him outcast.

- Mosley goes up to Harry Hughes and he says, "Coach, I'm gonna go up to the balcony.

"They won't let me sit with the team because I'm Black."

Hughes got up and he said, "All right, Aggie's we're all leaving.

"They don't want Mosley to sit with us."

And so he got up and he left.

- There must be equality, there must be fairness.

To accomplish that, you have to be honest.

- On the 7th of December, I decided to go up and have my picnic up on the rock A, which stood for Aggies, and on the way up there on my bicycle with my lunch, somebody came and said, "The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor."

(bomb exploding) - [Narrator] Repercussions of the 1941 attack rattled students and leaders at Colorado A&M.

The United States was suddenly entrenched in World War II.

- [Narrator] The student population dropped by half, to 700, and Roy M. Green, the college's new president, worked nonstop to keep the campus running.

- He made the contacts with the Department of Defense or the War Department and offered the services of the college, and the classrooms and the teachers to do training for active duty army personnel.

- [Narrator] The campus began to look more like a military base than a college.

(dramatic music) War and rumors of a Japanese mainland invasion cast a wave of fear and paranoia across the United States.

- Big signs went up at the stores.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Japanese American students at Colorado A&M became unwelcome at local shops.

- American students, they got the list of groceries that we needed, and they went to the store and brought the food after dark so that nobody could see what was being done.

- [Narrator] Soon, an executive order by Franklin D. Roosevelt forced 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps.

- [Forrest] They were concentration camps in my mind, and that was a horrible experience.

- [John] The country needed farmers.

And since my father was in the farm business and I was the oldest one, I was deferred.

(gentle piano music) - [Narrator] The war ended in 1945, and Congress rewarded soldiers for their service, setting aside funds for education.

- When the men came back, there was a huge increase in the interest in college again, because of the G.I.

Bill.

- [Narrator] 190 Quonset huts housed an influx of new students.

The campus and town were changing once again.

(gentle music) - My parents used to call Fort Collins the town of broad streets and narrow minds.

It was very conservative.

When the veterans came back, they were worldly.

They just completely opened up the culture of Fort Collins.

- [Narrator] Returning to society was not easy for all veterans of World War II.

Many were physically and mentally wounded.

(intense music) In 1946, enrollment was increasing, and the future of Colorado A&M looked bright.

President Roy Green sat down at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver for a well-deserved drink.

- There was a deranged ex-former soldier.

He came in, he started shooting wildly, and one of the bullets, unfortunately, struck Dr. Green.

- [Narrator] Green survived, but was weakened and died two years later.

- That was a devastating moment for this college campus.

(dramatic orchestral music) - [Narrator] Upon President Green's sudden death, Isaac E. Newsom led Colorado A&M.

Within a year, William E. Morgan took over.

- He made a statement very early on that he felt, thought, by 1960 they would probably be 10 or 15,000 students.

- [Narrator] Morgan revealed an ambitious plan to meet the challenge.

The face of Colorado A&M was about to change forever.

(upbeat jazz music) - They kind of held a contest to say, "Let's name our new mascot."

'Cause they actually had a ram, but it wasn't CAM.

They came up with several names, and the name that actually won was called Meathead.

- [Narrator] The name Meathead was a protest by die-hard students who wanted to be called Aggies, not Rams.

William E. Morgan, the new college president, overruled the name.

- He got up to the microphone and basically said, "I want you to meet CAM the Ram."

(crowd cheering) - Named for Colorado A&M and our live mascot that we take great pride in.

- [Narrator] Aggie tradition turned to Ram pride on May 1st, 1957, when Colorado A&M officially became Colorado State University.

A legacy of research contracts began to bring wealth and notoriety to Colorado State University.

Engineering student A.R.

Chamberlain earned the school's first PhD.

(gentle music) (static) - [Narrator] KCSU campus radio began broadcasting, and news of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights and the Vietnam War had Americans on edge.

Many, including those at CSU, did not feel their voices were being heard.

- [Gordon] They were demanding a lot of different things.

And one of them was the freedom to have beer in the Student Center.

- From 1896 until 1969 we were a dry town.

- [Narrator] The Association of Students of Colorado State organized a protest.

- [Gordon] Let's bring the beer on the campus and drink it in public and show the administrators that we're serious.

- [Narrator] The Beer-In worked.

Fort Collins became famous for its beer culture, and in 2013, CSU became the first university in the nation to offer a degree in fermentation science and technology.

(percussive music) - [Narrator] Protests for more important change grew louder.

Women, the disabled, and People of Color demanded social justice.

- Well, they were angry because the university did not represent the demographics of the state.

- [Student] When are we gonna get some students in here, that's what we wanna know.

Are you gonna bring 'em in?

Are you gonna bring 'em in?

1969, we're gonna get some students in here.

400 blacks, 400 chicanos.

- [Morgan] I have tried to explain to you that there just can't be a wand waving by some administrator or even a board.

- [Narrator] After 20 years, William Morgan realized that the university had grown beyond his wildest dreams.

(students shouting) On May 8th, 1970, students rallied to protest the Vietnam War.

(rock music) - We were all there talking about the importance of having a cause.

I remember the conversation vividly.

- [Narrator] Not long after the rally, Old Main burst into flames.

(siren wailing) (fire crackling) - [Mary] It seemed that the whole of Fort Collins was on fire.

And it was so frightening.

(gentle rock music) - The agricultural programs were very strong, the veterinary school was one of the top two or three in the country.

I wanted to emphasize that this was going to be a major university, not just an agricultural cow college as it was called at the time.

(cow mooing) - [Narrator] A well-known art collector named John Powers helped the University bring in legendary artists.

(upbeat rock music) - [Ralph] John would call up Andy Warhol and say, "Andy, I need you to come out."

- [Narrator] Warhol visits to CSU forged unlikely friendships.

Soon more artists came to Colorado State.

- During that time, we would follow them around with a video camera doing oral histories, asking about why they did what they did and how they did it.

(upbeat rock music) (bleeping) - But I tell everybody not to go into painting because nobody wants it anymore, I don't think.

It's more creative in video now to be more experimental and do art pieces.

(upbeat rock music) - [Narrator] Warhol's popularity was larger than life, and students were excited to welcome him.

- So they went out and they bought these enormous pipes.

Andy showed up and there were three huge soup cans sitting in the front yard and he loved them and he signed them.

And this both locally and nationally put us on the map as being an institution that values the arts in this case, as well as the sciences and agriculture.

- I remember talking to the Chief Financial Officer at the institution at the time, and his attitude was, "Oh, there's just no way "that anybody needs computers on their desk," you know.

"This should not be a university expense, "this is a luxury."

- And that was just (scoffs) insane thing.

- [Narrator] Between 1969 and 2019, the dedication and foresight of six presidents built Colorado State University into a world-class institution.

(intense orchestral music) The legacy of CSU astronauts advanced space exploration.

(intense orchestral music) Dr. Bill Grey pioneered Hurricane research and forecasting.

- [Narrator] On the night of July 28th, 1997, a flash flood tore through the center of campus just weeks before students were scheduled to begin class.

In a race to repair more than 40 buildings, CSU's 12th president, Al Yates, led a massive recovery effort.

- That event served to create, to build, to enhance community within the institution.

- [Narrator] Included in $140 million of flood repairs came many meaningful improvements for disabled access.

The 1990 American Disabilities Act provided funding.

- It was a nondiscrimination kind of legislation, and you cannot discriminate based on disability.

- [Narrator] For the first time in history, universities were required by law to provide access for the disabled.

Access meant a change in facilities and attitudes, which attracted a new generation of disabled students.

- [Gordon] CSU had itself a growth spurt due to a horrible natural disaster.

- [Narrator] Overcoming the flood and then the dark days of 9/11, the bond between CSU and Fort Collins strengthened.

- It's hard to describe what Fort Collins is without Colorado State University.

Oftentimes, we don't fully appreciate the impact they're having, not only in Fort Collins but literally around the world.

- [Narrator] In 2003, a $20.1 million grant by philanthropist Pat Stryker helped build the University Center for the Arts and renovate Hughes stadium.

(marching band music) After Harry Hughes won the school's first conference championship in 1950, college football changed, and the nation took notice.

- [Newscaster] Many former Aggie players have gone on to national fame in the professional leagues.

Among them, Jack Christianson, Dale Dodrill, Gary Glick and Fum McGraw.

- [Narrator] All mastered the game from a legacy of top coaches until 1993.

- It has a rich history, but for me at the top of that list is Sonny Lubick.

- We came in as a staff, we did not have a team meeting room.

- [Narrator] So team meetings were held in the Athletic Center's boiler room.

- 100 kids sitting on the floor, no air conditioning, no nothing, and they all had their shirts off.

They're sweating.

- [Narrator] While the team prepared for their 11-game season, the university's interim Athletic Director wanted to make it 12.

- I said, "Well, go ahead, "but make sure it's somebody we can beat."

And he comes back to me a week later, "Well, we got our 12th game."

I said, "Yeah, who's that?"

He said, "That is the University of Arizona."

(upbeat music) - Arizona had been picked by Sports Illustrated to win the National Championship that year.

- And I'm thinking, "Our kids, they're gonna get murdered.

"This is cruel."

- CSU went down to Arizona and beat them.

It was an unbelievable thing to watch.

- [Commentator] Rams showing blitz, and here they come, and there's a fumble on the play, and Colorado State picks it up.

Sean Moran, he's at the 50, he's at the 40, he's at the 30... - Some of the skeptics were saying, "Well, maybe these guys do know a little bit."

- That was really the game that put CSU football back on the map and brought Sonny into the limelight.

- [Narrator] CSU had not won a conference title in 40 years.

By 2007, they had won six, with 20 players joining the NFL.

But what Sonny had accomplished went far beyond football.

- He changed the dynamic of this institution.

He's just a compassionate, helpful individual.

And I think that's why his teams, they would run through the wall, so to speak, for him.

(upbeat music) - When I was growing up, I really didn't have too many female role models.

It's good to see the kids coming out here knowing that they can talk to us, and learn from us if they want, and even seeing the little boys coming out asking for our autographs.

So that shows the development of women's basketball.

(crowd cheering) - [Narrator] Basketball was invented in 1891 as a game for women.

- We know how much effort and how much time it takes to be an athlete here at Colorado State.

- Becky Hammon put CSU women's basketball on the map as an all American in the late 1990s.

- I'm probably the smallest person out there most of the time.

When it's out on the court, it's all out battle, and you forget about everything else and you go out there and you play your guts out.

- [Narrator] After playing professionally as one of the greatest players in WNBA history, she became the first female assistant coach in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs.

- Her head coach, Greg Popovich, which is someone that bears great credibility and respect, says she'll be a head coach in the NBA soon, and I think she reflects kind of the Ram can-do attitude.

- [Narrator] Women's athletics has a history of unstoppable legends.

- Tom Hilbert in his outstanding coaching ability.

I remember when we beat Nebraska here.

They were the number one ranked team in volleyball.

We came back and won three straight and beat them at home.

- [Narrator] Track and field champions like Lilian Green, Barb Lawson, and Olympic gold medalist Janae DeLoach.

- [Jim] I'm with Amy van Dyken who has just become the first woman in the history of the United States to win four gold medals in the same Olympics.

Were you aware that?

- No I didn't know anything about it.

My coach had mentioned something.

And I knew that three was getting close 'cause people were talking about it, but I'm excited.

That's really awesome.

- $1.5 billion of improvements at Colorado State were made by folks that will never realize the benefits of those decisions.

- We really have rebuilt the campus in a way that I think will serve generations of Rams to come.

- [Narrator] In 2015, CSU became the world's first campus to achieve a STARS Platinum rating, recognizing the school's dedication to sustainability and the environment.

- I came to Colorado State University as a student, a long time ago, 1978, because CSU and the University of Wisconsin at Madison were the only two universities in the country offering degrees in solar engineering at that time.

- [Narrator] Today, a massive 30-acre solar array at the former Christman Airfield, helps power Colorado State's campus.

One-third of nearly 3,000 classes offered are sustainability-related.

Courses range from U.S. Energy Policy to immersive learning at the CSU Mountain Campus.

- [Narrator] Modern discoveries are being built on the past work of countless dedicated researchers at Colorado State.

From George Glover in the 1870s, to modern infectious disease experts Ian Orme and Patrick Brennan, CSU has built the largest tuberculosis research team in the United States.

Cancer treatments for animals and humans are being found at the world's largest animal cancer center, pioneered by Steve Withrow.

Researcher Wayne McIlwraith founded Colorado State University's Orthopedic Research Center, innovating groundbreaking medicine for both horses and humans.

And methods to build disease fighting compounds through synthetic organic chemistry were revolutionized by John Stilly and Al Meyers.

In 2009, Japan's Emperor presented John Matsushima the Emperor's Citation for promoting quality beef in Japan, for pioneering steam flaking of corn, and for teaching some 10,000 animal science students at three universities.

- If there's somebody who's more iconic and a brand for what Colorado State University is around innovative thinking, innovative minds, that's Temple Grandin.

- There's something about her, I think, that's different.

- Autistics tend to be visual thinkers.

I think totally in pictures.

- [Narrator] By visualizing what a cow might see, one of Temple Grandin's innovations incorporates curved chutes to calm cattle as they approach slaughter.

- Stairway to heaven.

The thing is that they don't know.

(Temple whistles) It's just another chute.

- Today, Colorado State University, online, is roughly a $40-million operation.

- [Narrator] Online learning through CSU Global began in 2007.

It's the nation's first legally defined 100% online state university.

CSU Global provides professionals and distant students remote access to education as part of CSU's Multi-Campus system.

- You can go online, you can study, you can get a certificate, you can get a degree.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Another branch of the CSU system is Colorado State University Pueblo, formed in 2003.

The school began in 1933 as a three-room junior college, with 63 students and two instructors.

It grew to become a four-year university in 1965, serving communities of Southern Colorado.

Today, the regional campus of CSU Pueblo is a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution, offering 26 baccalaureate and six master degree programs.

(uplifting music) While research has the ability to define the future, it sometimes has the power to heal the past.

- [Tiffani] If you kind of understand the history of what happened to the bison in this country, it's very similar to the history of what happened to native people.

- [Narrator] 150 years ago, bison were facing extinction.

- [Tiffani] The mass killing of bison was directly... Because the government knew that it would impact tribal communities.

- [Narrator] Today, healthy herds are being rebuilt using assisted reproductive technologies developed by George Seidel and others at CSU.

- CSU is known for this in a general sense, taking things from the laboratory and making them work in the field.

- The Yellowstone herd is an excellent herd for doing restoration, or starting new herds from.

And the only problem is that it is infected with brucellosis.

- A lot of times mothers who have brucellosis can have sickly or weak calves that don't often survive.

Our goal is to use assisted reproductive techniques such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer to be able to generate offspring that do not have brucellosis, but that have the valuable genetics that we want.

- [Jack] It's just nice that we can kind of pick up that story and begin to establish some public herds and tribal herds again.

- [Narrator] In 2015, CSU released its first healthy bison herd at Soapstone Prairie, north of Fort Collins.

- [Tiffani] We were able to invite up some elders of tribes that have been in this part of the country for well before it was even the United States.

(hooves clumping) We heard the first hoof prints on the ground, and we were welcoming back our ancestors, we were welcoming them home.

- Recognizing and realizing that this land belong to indigenous people is really important.

- We are still part of this community, we are still stewards of this land, we care deeply about it.

- [Narrator] In 2017, CSU released a statement officially recognizing this importance.

- [Tiffani] The goal of the land acknowledgment provides an opportunity for both indigenous folks and non-indigenous folks to remember that history, to honor it, to think about it, to be educated on it.

And then think about present day, what are we gonna do?

- When I first started thinking about becoming a president, I didn't know whether I would be a president, so I never thought about being the first female.

And then when I realized that I was the first female here at Colorado State University and I realized what it meant to our students, to our alumni, not just women but also men, members of the LGBTQ+ community, it just had much more significance than I could've ever imagined.

- I encourage students to continue to advocate for their needs, because when they do is when the institution shifts and moves.

- [Ray] At President McConnell's inauguration, there was a protest led by Black students saying, "You need to address these racist incidents."

- President McConnell was like, "What can I do?

What else can we be doing that we haven't done before?"

And so she then came up with a Race Bias Equity Initiative.

- Helping people from very diverse backgrounds feel like they belong, and that they matter, and that they are honored, I think is incredibly significant.

- [Narrator] In March of 2020, Colorado State University shut down its campus in an international effort to stop the COVID-19 pandemic.

CSU researchers are joining the fight against the deadly virus.

- We are a resilient institution.

We have great leadership here.

We have great students here and staff and faculty.

We have to believe in our greatness.

(gentle piano music) - I always say we should approach every problem with an open heart and an open mind, and I think that that's what drives a good land-grant university into the future.

- This is the quietest, most understated, globally preeminent university in the entire world.

And when you come to Colorado State University, you feel like you can have an impact on the world, and absolutely you will.

- [Narrator] For 150 years, the great experiment that is Colorado State University has been evolving and transforming the world in unimaginable ways.

- People had the hope that gave rise to land-grant universities, and so history provides us that sense of, it's possible.

- [Narrator] Are the possibilities of tomorrow rooted in the past?

And if so, what path will they follow?

(students murmuring) - I always say this to our players and our team, "Success is not a straight line."

(uplifting music) - [Tony] The Oval was originally a hay field.

At some point somebody had the idea of planting elms.

They weren't the beautiful elms that we stand under today while those people were alive, but they planted the seeds and they had the vision for what it could be.

And that's what I hope we're able to do, but only if we stand on the platform of history that allows us to see clearly the future.

(upbeat bluegrass music) ♪ Run for the fences, Riley ♪ When their backs are turned ♪ Follow the railroad, Riley ♪ When their backs are turned ♪ Run for the mountains