1862
The Morrill (Land-Grant College) Act of 1862 is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. The Morrill Act, named for U.S. Rep. Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, established the country’s land-grant system, providing states with federally owned lands that could be sold to fund the establishment of colleges that would teach agriculture and the mechanical arts. These were critical areas of study for the country’s working-class citizens, and land-grant institutions were formed “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.”
1865
The Kentucky General Assembly establishes the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky. In a state still reeling from a divisive Civil War, the legislature came together to establish Kentucky’s land-grant institution as one of its first orders of business. The college was first created as a publicly chartered department of Kentucky University, an existing institution owned by the Christian Church. The relationship would later be severed by the legislature, and the Agricultural and Mechanical College would be reestablished as the independent institution that would become the University of Kentucky.
1866
The college’s original home is secured on the historic Ashland and Woodlands estates in Lexington. Regent John Bryan Bowman purchased Henry Clay’s Ashland estate and J.B. Tilford’s Woodlands estates to serve as the site for the newly formed college, describing the combined estate as “one of the most beautiful and fertile in America.”
1881
William Ashbrook Kellerman becomes the first professor of agriculture. In its early years, the college’s coursework consisted mainly of general scientific and classic studies, with “practical agriculture” to be learned primarily through farm-related manual labor. The appointment of Kellerman as professor of economic botany, agriculture and horticulture marked a turning point toward focused instruction in the science of agriculture.
1882
The Agriculture and Mechanical College moves to the current site of the University of Kentucky. After the college’s separation from Kentucky University, the city of Lexington donated a former city park of 52 acres and issued bonds to raise funds for construction of the first buildings on campus.
1885
Melville Scovell is appointed as the first director of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. To address the growing call for more scientific knowledge to support education at agricultural colleges, President James K. Patterson moved to establish the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. He hired Scovell, a respected U.S. agent for the Department of Agriculture at the time, as its first director. It would be two more years before Congress officially passed the Hatch Act in 1887 to provide funds for such state agricultural experiment stations, and Scovell would also become the college’s dean in 1910.
1886
The state legislature directs the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station to assume responsibility for analyzing and labeling commercial fertilizers sold in the state. This empowered the Experiment Station with an important regulatory function, in addition to its roles in experimentation and research. Over the next 30 years, regulatory services would expand to include seeds, nursery products, livestock feed, food and drugs.
1887
The Agricultural Experiment Station buys 48.5 acres of farmland, including what would become the Cooper House. With its regulatory services and research expanding and an expected infusion of funding from the passage of the Hatch Act, the Experiment Station needed more room to grow. Previously only 12 acres on campus had been allotted for farming use, and much of it had been stripped of topsoil to make bricks for campus buildings.
The Strader place, previously owned by Dr. L. Herr, was purchased by the Experiment Station for use as a research farm. It included a small barn and a large barn, along with a brick dwelling house that would become known as the Cooper House, serving as the residence of all the college deans and directors (except Joseph Kastle) until the administration of Dean Charles Barnhart.
1889
The Agricultural Experiment Station expands into new facilities. The growing Agricultural Experiment Station, which was initially started in a partitioned basement room of the Main Building, had classroom and laboratory space in the newly constructed building, which it shared with the college’s natural history and chemistry departments. The building, located next to the Main Building, would be almost completely gutted in a fire two years later, destroying most of the station’s equipment and its research records.
1890
The second Morrill Act provides federal funding for the teaching, research and extension missions of land-grant institutions. The Morrill Act of 1890 also sought to expand access to Black Americans. To qualify for the funding, the established land-grant institutions were required to demonstrate that their admissions were not restricted by race or to establish a second land-grant institution for Black students. As a result, it led to the establishment of multiple historically Black colleges and universities as land-grant institutions, including Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Kentucky.
1898
Robert Browning Hamilton of Lexington receives the first University of Kentucky degree in agriculture. The college’s complete course of study in agriculture had been fully established with the conferral of its first degree, including classes in botany, plant physiology, horticulture and general agriculture.
1905
The Agricultural Experiment Station Building opens, providing office and laboratory space for the station’s growing regulatory and research programs. The building, with its four-columned portico facing South Limestone Street, was the largest on the campus at the time. The original structure currently serves as the west wing of Scovell Hall.
1908
The Agriculture and Mechanical College becomes the State University, and the Agricultural Experiment Station grows to cover more than 230 acres. Clarence Wentworth Mathews, who had served as head of the agricultural department at the Agriculture and Mechanical College, became the first dean of the College of Agriculture for State University.
Since 1898, the Agricultural Experiment Station had been gradually acquiring more farmland to the east and south of campus, including the 53-acre L.M. Land farm, the 89-acre Carey Alford farm, and the 40-acre Shelby Kinkead farm. By 1908, these acquisitions connected the campus seamlessly to its existing Experiment Station Farm.
“We have one of the finest farms anywhere, and we are very proud of it,” Scovell wrote to a colleague at the time. “The station is growing rapidly.”
1909
Professor E.S. Good begins experimenting with the immunization of hogs against hog cholera. Hog cholera was one of the most dreaded livestock diseases of its time, with related annual losses in Kentucky estimated at $1.5 million during bad years. Thanks in large part to Good’s research, the Experiment Station would soon come to the industry’s rescue, vaccinating 5,730 hogs in 140 herds with 88.2% success as a severe outbreak swept the state in 1911. Good’s research laid the groundwork for the college’s many significant contributions to vaccine research in years to come.
1910
Home Economics becomes a department in the College of Agriculture. The assignment of the newly named department (formerly Domestic Science), which had previously been part of the College of Arts and Science, marked the beginning of a significant partnership for agriculture and home economics at the university. The four-year course of study was revised and expanded in scope, enabling the young women enrolled to study many additional agricultural subjects, and the home economics department’s reach and influence grew through new contacts with farming organizations and related agencies across Kentucky.
1912
The UK Agricultural Special, a “university on wheels,” makes 108 stops and covers nearly 2,500 railroad miles across the state over 29 days. The train was equipped abundantly with exhibits on new research and recently developed agricultural best practices. Lectures, demonstrations and agricultural literature were provided at each stop. The effort reached more than 70,000 Kentuckians.
1914
The Smith-Lever Act establishes an official program to support cooperative extension services. The roots of the country’s Cooperative Extension program reach back to agricultural clubs and societies, which sprang up after the American Revolution in the early 1800s. However, the Smith-Lever Act formalized this program in 1914, establishing an official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) partnership with land-grant universities to apply research and provide community education.
In Kentucky, the passage of the Smith-Lever Act led to the infusion of additional funding for the program and a reorganization and expansion of its work. The General Assembly would formally adopt a resolution to accept the provisions of the Smith-Lever Act by 1916 and authorize county fiscal courts and boards of education to hire county extension agents to work in cooperation with the university and the USDA. Cooperative Extension’s work in Kentucky at the time covered a wide variety of topics, including field crop demonstrations; lawn care; dairying; beef-cattle feed demonstrations; the raising of sheep, hogs and poultry; care and use of manure; silo building; drainage demonstrations; stump removal; animal diseases; improved agricultural tools; fertilizers; boys’ corn clubs (precursor to 4-H programs); cooperative marketing; roads; and agricultural meetings, including chautauquas, movable schools in agriculture and agricultural trains. The college was also expanding important new lines of work for the state, including instruction and research in rural and agricultural economics and the more sophisticated study of veterinary science and animal disease.
1915
Mary Sweeny takes charge of the home economics branch of extension work in Kentucky. Sweeny, who had earned master’s degrees in chemistry from State University and in home economics and physiological chemistry from Columbia University, also served as head of State University’s home economics department and had founded a Kentucky branch of the National Home Economics Association, for which she later served as a national councilmember. Sweeny would also go on to lead the home economics division of the U.S. Food Administration before taking leave during World War I to serve as a canteen worker in Germany.
1916
The State University is renamed the University of Kentucky.
1916
The first Thoroughbred stud is immunized against B. abortivo-equinus. The germ was originally isolated and classified in 1911 (within a bacteria group that would later become known as Salmonella) by E.S. Good and his colleagues at the Experiment Station and had been identified as a cause of infectious abortions in mares. Costly outbreaks had plagued the Bluegrass region’s valuable horse industry, and losses from the disease in Kentucky alone were estimated at millions of dollars at the time. The Experiment Station’s development of a successful vaccine would be credited by some with saving the light horse industry in Kentucky.
1918
Thomas Poe Cooper becomes dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. A year later, he would also assume the role of director of the Cooperative Extension Service. The leadership of all three organizations would be combined in all future dean and director appointments, and Cooper would stay in the position longer than any other dean, from 1918 to 1951. During his tenure, he would also serve as acting UK president from 1940 to 1941, but he turned down the opportunity to be president in favor of remaining in the College of Agriculture.
1919
To support the country’s war effort, the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station steps in to temporarily revive hemp production in the state. The crop had seen significant decline since the Civil War, but it was nonetheless deemed important for the country’s success, as concern grew that supplies of competing fibers from foreign sources would be reduced or eliminated. The Station’s Department of Markets under John R. Humphrey coordinated the creation of experimental pools of hemp farmers in counties across the state to work with East Coast mill owners, marketing roughly 1,000 tons from multiple counties.
1921
The first 4-H Week, originally named Junior Week, is held at UK. The event was funded with a $600 investment from the Kentucky State Board of Agriculture.
1924
The Western Kentucky Substation at Princeton in Caldwell County and the Robinson Substation at Quicksand in Breathitt County are launched. Both substations were established with appropriations from the Kentucky General Assembly. In Eastern Kentucky, Dean Cooper had negotiated the transfer of 15,000 acres in Breathitt, Perry and Knott counties in 1923 from the E.O. Robinson Mountain Trust, for the establishment of an Eastern Kentucky substation to study reforestation, along with other agricultural research and demonstration work pertinent to the region. In Western Kentucky, the funds for the purchase of the 400 acres of land were raised by popular subscription from the citizens of Caldwell County themselves in a grassroots effort to draw the project to their county. Each experiment substation focuses on agricultural conditions and interests unique to its part of the state.
1924-1930
The Experiment Station Farm undergoes more expansion near campus. During the 1920s, the Experiment Station completed multiple acquisitions of farmland to the south and east of its existing farm property, because it was once again running out of room for its extensive work with crops, livestock and soils.
The acquisitions included the 130-acre Katherine Pettit farm in 1923; the 102-acre C.B. Patterson farm in 1926; 90 acres of the Van Meter farm in 1929; and 20 acres of the Berry farm in 1930.
Much of this farmland was at risk of being sold for suburban development at the time. The additions brought the campus farm’s total surveyed acreage to 584 by 1930.
1930
The Dairy Products Building opens. Located roughly 200 yards from the Agricultural Experiment Station Building, across what was formerly Rose Street, the building housed residential instruction, research and extension branches for not only the dairy section, but all sections of the Animal Industry Group. A new Agricultural Engineering Building was also approved by the state legislature and built nearby, at the east end of what would become the campus “agricultural quadrangle,” along with the Livestock Judging Pavilion located to the north and the Animal Pathology Building constructed in the mid-1940s to the southeast.
1931
Agronomist E.N. Fergus identifies a remarkable fescue variety that would become known as “Kentucky 31.” In Frenchburg, Kentucky, after judging entries at a local sorghum syrup show, agronomist E.N. Fergus was invited to view a tall, hardy fescue growing on some farms in Menifee County. After extensive tests, UK released “Kentucky 31” 12 years later. It quickly became popular across the state, particularly with farmers in Western Kentucky who had previously been unable to grow grass with any long-term success. The “wonder grass,” as some called it, would develop into a prominent variety grown for forage, conservation and erosion control on millions of acres, not only in Kentucky but across the Southeast.
1933
The Cooperative Extension Service grows to include at least one worker in every Kentucky county, building a solid reputation for service and leadership in their communities. As part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, extension agents would undertake major responsibilities for the implementation of many domestic programs aimed at economic recovery for the country, including Kentucky’s Agricultural Adjustment program, which offered compensation to farmers in exchange for growing fewer crops to stave off the overproduction that had contributed to the Great Depression.
1939
The Department of Veterinary Science, internationally known for its breakthrough research on Salmonella, is named as the National Salmonella Center. UK Alum Philip R. Edwards, the first graduate of the university’s department of bacteriology and a professor in the College of Agriculture, served as the center’s first director. The outbreak of war increased the need for reliable serotyping of salmonella for diagnosis of enteric diseases, and Edwards served as principal investigator for the Office of Scientific Research and Development for the production of the required reagents.
1941
The college is renamed the College of Agriculture and Home Economics. The change was announced under the leadership of then-UK acting president Thomas Poe Cooper, who had advocated for such a change since 1933. Cooper had insisted the change would rightfully “emphasize the work of home economics and place it upon an equal basis with agriculture and other work” across the university.
1942
Extension agents carry out the "live-at-home" campaign to support World War II food rationing efforts, helping Kentuckians produce 75% of their own food. More than 55,000 families met the goal by 1943, and an additional 60,000 families had increased the amount of food they had produced. According to a 1943 survey, members of extension-supported homemakers’ clubs had canned more than 84 million quarts of fruits, vegetables and meats in their homes.
1955
Eden Shale Research Farm is established near Owenton, Kentucky. Farmers in the Eden Shale region in the northern and central parts of Kentucky came together in 1953 to lobby for a research farm that would focus on agricultural challenges in their area. They raised money to purchase five farms, totaling 961 acres, to study pasture improvement, management and livestock grazing related to Kentucky 31 fescue. The farm’s early experimentation was varied, including wood lot management studies that supported production of Scotch pine Christmas trees and the first u-pick operation for strawberries in the state. In 2013, the Kentucky Beef Network took over management of Eden Shale through a cooperative agreement with the College of Agriculture, maintaining it as an important demonstration and learning center for the state’s beef cattle producers.
1957
UK opens a new Agricultural Experiment Station at Coldstream Farm. After the decision was made to locate a new medical center on the Experiment Station Farm near Rose Street, the university purchased 1,275 acres at Coldstream and Crown Crest farms on Newtown Pike in Lexington for the relocation of experiment farm research. The property, previously a successful Thoroughbred horse breeding farm, was subdivided to include 330 acres for beef cattle, 192 acres for sheep, 35 acres for light horse husbandry and 123 acres for animal pathology.
1959
UK purchases Spindletop Farm. The 1,066-acre property, along with the elegant Spindletop Mansion and 15 additional tenant houses, was acquired in a gift-purchase of $850,000 from Mildred "Pansy" Grant, the widow of Texas oil magnate Miles Frank Yount. The grand mansion had been built over two years (1935-1937) at a cost of $1 million, and at the time it was transferred to UK, the farmland was appraised at roughly $1,600 per acre.
1962
Extension agronomist Shirley Phillips' work establishes UK as a leader in the no-till movement. Phillips, who had previously been an advocate for conventional tillage methods, changed course after viewing the no-tilled corn field and spraying program of farmer and UK alum Harry Young, Jr., who is recognized as the first to use no-till methods on commercial farmland in the United States. Phillips sparked a revolution among his colleagues in agronomy, and the department quickly established itself as a world leader for research in no-till crop production. Phillips and Young co-authored the first book on no-tillage agriculture in 1973. No-till acreage in the United States topped an estimated 104 million acres in 2017. According to a 2021 study, the number of no-till farming acres worldwide had grown to 507.6 million by 2019, or 14.7% of total global cropland, with no-till adoption continuing to grow by roughly 25 million acres per year.
1962
Animal science researchers, including James Kemp and William Varney, release reports on new quick-aging methods for country hams. The results of their research, which continued into the 1970s, would standardize the aging process for the traditional Kentucky delicacy of country-style hams, cutting the time required to achieve optimal results in half, from a year to six months. Their work opened new opportunities in the state for country-ham production to become a profitable enterprise with consistent results for Kentucky producers.
1963
The Agricultural Science Center North building opens. Championed by an influential group of Kentucky farming and allied industry leaders called the Blueprint for Kentucky Agriculture Progress Committee, the building offered 119 state-of-the-art laboratories, along with six classrooms and seven hybrid classroom laboratories. The building was also established as the home of the National Tobacco Research Laboratory, which had been newly formed by Congress.
1964
The Wood Utilization Center opens in Eastern Kentucky. The center was created with the mission of demonstrating potential new uses of timber and working to improve economic conditions in the area. In May, First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson toured the center while visiting Eastern Kentucky as part of the government’s “War on Poverty” initiative. “This center is the foundation upon which new industries will build,” Johnson said. “It is a chance for economic development that will really start Appalachia moving ahead.”
1966
Kentucky becomes the first state to send a Black delegate to the National 4-H Convention.
1967
The University of Kentucky purchases Maine Chance Farm on Newtown Pike. The horse farm was previously owned by cosmetics magnate Elizabeth Arden Graham. Along with adjoining farmland of Spindletop and Coldstream, Maine Chance became part of UK’s North Farm. It has operated as a horse farm for teaching and research, accommodating many programs associated with horse management, nutrition and health.
1969
Cooper House becomes the home of the UK Department of Landscape Architecture.
1970
UK soil scientist Bob Blevins starts no-till research plots at Spindletop Farm in Lexington, planting corn into a bluegrass pasture. The plots, recognized as one of the longest-running continuous no-till research sites in the world, are still active.
1971
The college begins research and education in soybean double-cropping, becoming a leader in the Southeast. The numerous studies helped in the establishment of management strategies that allowed farmers to plant soybeans earlier, using no-tillage methods and early-maturing, small-grain varieties. As a result of this research and subsequent education programs, roughly 90% of small grain grown in Kentucky would be followed by soybeans by 2000, with double cropping accounting for one-third of Kentucky’s total soybean acreage annually.
1972
The Agricultural Science Building South is completed. For the first time in the college’s history, the faculty and staff of all animal science programs were housed in one building with the opening of the Agricultural Science Building South. The new facility was designed to provide adequate space and equipment for a variety of animal science research in service of Kentucky’s fast-growing livestock industry. It would be renamed the Garrigus Building in 1990 in honor of Dr. Wesley P. Garrigus, longtime chair of the Department of Animal Sciences.
1978
The Central Kentucky Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center is transferred from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture to the University of Kentucky. The facility, located on the south end of Coldstream Farm, would expand to become a full-service animal-health diagnostic, research and teaching facility, changing its name in 2010 to the UK Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (UKVDL).
1980s
Western Kentucky substation personnel initiate multiple programs to improve on-farm efficiency and help financially strapped farmers weather hard times. Higher interest rates in the early 1980s and a softening of export demands contributed to cash flow problems for many farmers in Western Kentucky, and farm land prices had dropped on average by a third by 1985. The substation’s continuing research in crop rotation, the use of urea nitrogen for fertilization, economic feasibility of irrigation, and intensive wheat production helped farmers get the most from their operations. At the same time, educational programs for farmers on farm record keeping and borrowing were established, and a toll-free “hotline” service was launched to assist farmers under the stress of impending foreclosure.
1984
A vaccine developed by UK researchers for equine viral arteritis (EVA) helps to bring the disease quickly under control during a severe outbreak in Central Kentucky. The 1984 outbreak on Thoroughbred breeding farms in Kentucky was the first occasion of EVA diagnosis in Thoroughbreds in North America, and it resulted in widespread national and international concerns about the disease, which can cause abortion in pregnant mares, death of young foals and development of a long-term carrier state in stallions.
1986
The National Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) organization is established to strengthen and diversify the professional development of industry leaders. The UK MANRRS chapter, founded in 1989, grew to become one of the organization’s most widely recognized groups, receiving the “Chapter of the Year” award eight times by 2023.
1987
The Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center is established, thanks in large part to the generous support of benefactors Maxwell and Muriel Gluck. The center has grown into a world-renowned leader of equine research and the only scientific institute in the United States where virtually all faculty conduct full-time research in equine health and diseases.
1988
UK researchers develop and release the first ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test for drug detection in equine athletes. Horse racing industry leaders approached Thomas Tobin at the Gluck Equine Research Center to help them find a solution to the growing problem of opiate abuse in racehorses. Tobin enlisted the help of UK pharmaceutical sciences researcher Hsin-Hsiung “Daniel” Tai and UK chemist David Watt to develop a panel of highly sensitive immunoassay tests to detect the high-potency drugs. The technology was developed into one of the university’s first successful commercial spinoff companies, WTT, which was later purchased by the Neogen Corporation.
1991
The Arboretum is founded as a joint effort between the University of Kentucky and the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. By the end of the decade, it would be named the State Botanical Garden for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The C. Oran Little Research Center is established in Versailles, Kentucky. The 1,484-acre farm property was purchased for the development of a modern animal research facility. Shortly after the farm was purchased, the state legislature approved funds for buildings and infrastructure to support beef, swine and sheep research units as part of the center. Veterinary science, plant and soil sciences, and biosystems and agricultural engineering faculty also utilize the center for their research.
2001
An interdisciplinary team of UK scientists tackles the sudden outbreak of Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome (MRLS). The condition caused a high number of late-term abortions in equine mares across Central Kentucky, with an estimated 17% of pregnant Thoroughbred broodmares in the area losing foals due in 2001-2002. Economic damage to the industry was estimated at more than $300 million. The cause was found to be related to the ingestion of barb-haired eastern tent caterpillars, which had hatched in unusually high numbers in the area during the spring. UK’s swift response and extensive research into MRLS has led to widely recognized precautions and remedies across the equine industry.
2002
The Department of Community and Leadership Development is formed. The formation of the department brought together the combined expertise of the college’s faculty in rural sociology, agricultural education, agricultural communication and program-and-staff development. Its intent is to develop innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to further its core purpose of nurturing capable leadership and vibrant communities across the state.
2005
The college creates the Office of Diversity. The office was created with the purpose of developing programming and resources to support the college’s minority students, staff and faculty.
2010
The Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky (CEDIK) is launched. CEDIK was developed as a college-level unit to provide professional development, instruction for students and county agents, and an external reach to bolster local economics across the commonwealth. CEDIK has continued to work as a coordinating entity to assist communities in creating economic opportunity and enriching lifestyles for their residents and to reinforce the continuing relevance of the university’s foundational land-grant mission.
2011
UK Extension soil scientist Lloyd Murdock discovers wheat blast near Princeton. The first find outside of South America, it could have resulted in quarantines and lost exports. Plant pathologist Mark Farman used DNA analysis to determine the blast was a harmless jump from ryegrass, and the Kentucky grain industry was put at ease.
2013
The College of Agriculture’s name is changed to the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. The change was made to reflect the broad depth and evolving scope of the college’s degrees and programs.
2014
Nancy Cox becomes the first female dean of the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
2020
The UK Grain and Forage Center of Excellence opens in Princeton. Recognizing the important role that grains and forages play in Kentucky’s economy and the college’s noted history of leading the charge on crop technologies that have been adopted around the world, the Grain and Forage Center of Excellence was established at the substation in Princeton, Kentucky. The primary goal of the center is to assist Kentucky farmers in meeting the challenges of feeding a growing world population sustainably, protecting the environment, expanding the Kentucky economy and passing their farms to the next generation.
2023
The UK College of Agriculture Food and Environment receives the largest gift in UK history. The $100 million gift was bestowed by University of Kentucky alum and former trustee Carol Martin “Bill” Gatton, who passed away in 2022. The college was renamed the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment in honor of Gatton’s parents, Edith Martin and Harry W. Gatton, Sr.
2025
Laura Stephenson takes on the position of vice president for land-grant engagement and dean of the UK Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
