A one-bottom plow pulled by a team of horses broke through the sod on Dec. 2, 1891, signaling the first campus development project at OSU, then known as Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College.

Only one week earlier, the campus had been created when the deeds to four properties from Stillwater homesteaders totaling 200 acres were transferred to the board of regents. At the time, only five acres were thought to be necessary for college buildings, with the balance of the property designated for an agricultural experiment station.

Led by the experiment station director, James Neal, six Stillwater citizens marked the campus corners and experiment station with stones, and then they burned prairie grass along the borders to mark the property’s edges.

Experiment station employees hooked up a three-horse team to the one-bottom plow and began the slow process of turning the virgin sod. Hampered by winter weather and the reality that a hitched team could cover only several acres a day, the project wasn’t completed until the following spring of 1892.

By the time plowing was completed, two wooden structures -- a barn and a laboratory -- stood on the campus. Several other wood-framed buildings would soon follow, but it would take two more years before the College Building, now known as Old Central, would join them on the prairie.

The open grasslands northwest of Stillwater had become a home for a college, and the landscape would never be the same again.