As the Daily Sentinel reflects over a century of its existence, it is fitting to discuss the impact of the city’s landmark institution –Stephen F. Austin State University–on the history of the town during this same period. SFA is the Sentinel’s most important and the longest-running local story. For the city and the East Texas region, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of SFA. The Sentinel, as the town’s ‘instrument of record,’ chronicled the demise of the Old University, the traumas of procuring a replacement, the saga of SFA’s construction and opening years, the threats during the Depression and wars, and the explosive transformation of the small college into the major regional university which exists today. Nacogdoches’ determination to tie its fortunes to education in the early part of this century has had consequences of historic proportions for the social, cultural, economic, and geographic development of the city. This was anticipated from the beginning:

“With the capture of the location of Stephen F. Austin Normal, a new era has been born in the industrial, commercial, and social life of Nacogdoches. . . .The victory is two-fold, for the reasons that it brought our people together in unity of purpose; every man, regardless of financial standing, doing everything in his power, willingly and cheerfully to accomplish the victory, and it was through this impenetrable organization and enthusiastic cooperation that we won - an object lesson on the value of cooperation that we will never forget, and an inspiration that will hold us together in the future.” Daily Sentinel, July 16, 1917.

The quest for SFA changed Nacogdoches. The deep sense of loss in the community at the closing of the Old University in 1904, more a blow to the town’s self-image than to its pocketbook, was eloquently expressed in a now-famous letter by Karle Wilson Baker in 1906; there was something different about a town with a college. Nacogdoches became obsessed with finding a replacement. The movement to secure the “East Texas Normal” for Nacogdoches became more than a search for an economic stimulus. It became a mission, a quest which did produced a remarkable unity of spirit. Even the losing towns conceded that Nacogdoches wanted it more, organized better, and sold themselves more effectively than did others. The town also had to promise land, students, and changes to its infrastructure. Had a high level of unity not developed, the crusaders could not have withstood the emotional ups and downs, financial strains, and false starts that accompanied the quest between 1915 and 1921. The years of waiting were sobering and costly, and The Sentinel chronicled every scheme, every strategy, every town meeting, every emotional dip on the roller-coaster ride.

The opening of SFA taught new lessons. The amount of local work and money required to get the college open surprised everyone. The delays, caused by bad weather, underestimated cost, and a bankrupt contractor, had to be added to the bill for recruiting the students, finding housing for them, and for providing temporary classrooms for the homeless college. This whole process, which produced even more civic unity, could have easily gone the other way. Fortunately, the town and gown learned to work together from the beginning; they learned to appreciate one another and to think beyond petty differences. The citizens acquired a different attitude toward the faculty and the students of the new school than they otherwise would have. SFA was not something that dropped out of heaven like manna. The bond that was struck during the year on Washington Square lasted for two decades. There really was a feeling in town that it was “our college.” New faculty and students were welcomed in a way almost unthinkable today.

Socially and demographically, SFA changed Nacogdoches. In an article entitled “New Names,” the The Sentinel asked in December of 1923, “Have you noticed the new names in the social columns of the daily newspaper? The city is changing, changing fast. Newcomers there are by the score.” The newcomers and their activities would come to encompass not only the life on campus but also the life of the whole of the town and much of East Texas. The socialization process with the high school students had an immediate result: friendships with the outsiders on Washington Square campus inspired 100% of the NHS graduating class of 1924 to attend college. Every year, new people arrived in town, and some of these, from every SFA class, made Nacogdoches their permanent home. These yearly immigrants lowered the average age of the town. The young people brought with them new and different demands.

Small businesses catering to the students opened first in houses and later in small strip shopping centers just north of the campus on North and College Streets. The newspaper advertised a greater variety of dresses, cars, and food. The town did not leave this to chance:

“It is the duty of our citizenship to leave nothing undone to make the 345 college students now in our midst feel that in choosing Nacogdoches as the place to secure college education they have chosen a city whose people not only welcome a student body, but who can and will translate the welcome into social activities of the right sort.” Daily Sentinel, September 26, 1923

Community-wide parties, picnics, interscholastic field and literary meets, campus performances, lecture series, recitals, Easter services, the Lyceum Series, speakers on world affairs, concert pianists, famous poets and authors–all these activities came to Nacogdoches as a result of SFA. The soda shops downtown were now joined by new hangouts near the campus, like the Campus Shop and the College Coffee Shop. The college was attracting non-students to town, too. In commenting on the estimated seventy-five families who moved into town at the beginning of the school year, The Pine Log in 1927 called these families, “perhaps the largest immigration over a like period of perspective permanent home makers ever recorded here.” Professionals providing services also came; the opening of Memorial Hospital was a direct result of the opening of SFA.

The geographic changes caused by SFA have been among the most dramatic. Washington Square felt the impact first. The oversized homes around Washington Square, built several decades earlier in a more prosperous era, became boarding houses in 1923 for both students and faculty. When SFA officially moved north in 1924, Nacogdoches began moving also–a process which has not ceased to the present day. Construction of new boarding houses for the students, housing for faculty families, and services for both followed. At first, the area between the campus and town filled in; next, the residential areas north and west of the campus expanded; the last areas to develop were the areas to the east and northeast of the campus. There were no convenient bridges to cross the Lanana Creek until long after World War II.

The northward move of the suburbs only accelerated in the period after 1956 as SFA expanded from a college into a university. The other main historic impact of this explosion was the overnight commercialization of North Street. The opening of a second commercial road in 1973, University Drive, only increased the volume and nature of the trends. Unfortunately, the building of the new business artery came too late to save the architectural heritage destroyed on North Street in the meantime. The city passed a zoning law in 1970, in part, to control the frontier-like atmosphere which had returned to Nacogdoches as the SFA-induced boom threatened to ruin the city’s visible heritage. Victor Fain, the editor of The Sentinel, headed the new zoning commission. A landmark ordinance to protect the historically sensitive areas went onto the books shortly thereafter.

The campus itself underwent a type of frantic expansion in the 1960s and early 1970s. The original campus, 208 acres carved out of the homestead of Texas patriot Thomas J. Rusk, was slow to develop because the funds were never there. The state, after funding the Austin and Rusk Buildings, refused any expansion of SFA until after World War II. SFA had to beg the rest of her buildings from the local residents, locally generated funds, or from the federal PWA programs of the New Deal. The federal assistance helped to pull Nacogdoches out of the Depression, as did the WAAC school during the war. One of the least understood periods in SFA and town history is the presidency of Dr. Paul Boynton; Boynton rallied the town, provided programs, and surplus war buildings to keep SFA alive by housing new students and programs after the war. Boynton died just as the formulas and the laws of the state changed permitting a more creative use of funds through borrowing. The frantic building pace of the Ralph Steen years, however, paralleled the somewhat thoughtless pattern of the town’s destruction of North Street. Only after Steen had needlessly sacrificed the pines along the Vista and Griffith Park to the demand for dormitories and parking, did the administration at SFA decide to move eastward into the campus farm and across the creek with the purchase of new acreage. The town’s and the gown’s needs again marched in lock step as bridges and University Drive came onto the urban plans.

The economic impact of SFA is difficult to overestimate. The 1923 sums of $150,000 appropriated for the Austin Building and $30,000 for salaries were impressive at the time. Even more outstanding, however, was the annual payroll of $200,000 and the $500,000 spent by students in town in a year in the middle of the Depression. As the Sentinel reported in 1937, “more people depend upon it [SFA] for a livelihood than any other two single industries in Nacogdoches.” The latest statistics complete the story. SFA’s annual budget for 1998-99, up twenty four million in four years, is $106,508,362. SFA’s income comes primarily from non-state appropriations; only 37% comes from state appropriations, with student fees generating 25% and Auxiliary Enterprises another 19%; the rest, 18% comes from Higher Education Assistance, Grants and Contracts, local sales, workshops and Education and General Funds. The assigned book value of the campus in 1927 was $419,965; in 1937, it was $831,480; in 1998, it was $166,000,000.

Nacogdoches over the years has become more and more dependent on the income generated by SFA. Even with a conservative multiplier effect, such as 2 1/2 times as suggested by the American Council of Education, the impact of a budget the size of SFA’s is enormous. The bulk of the providers of goods and services in Nacogdoches are dependent in either direct or indirect ways on the money generated though SFA–from faculty and staff salaries to students expenditures. Landowners and tax collectors are similarly dependent. Because of the source of the funds, both from the state as appropriations and the fees generated by the students attending the institution, the money generated by SFA comes from outside the local economic base. The low wage pool of talented labor provided by students also has an impact in the town. When the Chamber of Commerce solicits new industry for the town, they rave about the benefits of an economy and quality of life enhanced by the university. Merchants lament the drop in revenue accompanying each vacation period. The symbiotic relationship of the town and the gown sometimes takes amusing forms: frequently fearful of the way young students would vote in the 1970s, city leaders somehow managed to schedule the liquor-option election in September when the students would be in town in force.

Because of its economic impact, both on and off campus, enrollment has always been a subject of continuing interest. The initial enrollment peaked about 1927 and remained remarkably even in the range of 2000 students with the exception of 1932-33 at the height of the Depression. World War II caused SFA’s most critical drop in enrollment; there was considerable fear that the school might have to close. With the exception of the Korean war, enrollments steadily climbed in the late 1940s and 1950s, then exploded in the 1960s once the baby-boomers hit the college market. The enrollment hit 10,000 in 1972, the same year the university let contracts and bonds for over $18,000,000 in building construction in one session. It was a happy time, one administrator remembered. SFA had more funds on hand than the banks had deposits. The boom was not to last; SFA was not to see the continued yearly expansions, although the enrollments have continued in the range of eleven to twelve thousand until the present. With an enrollment of over 12, 000, SFA ranks twelfth in the state in terms of head count, but in terms of the total semester hours credit generated, SFA ranks tenth. There are only four other universities in the state which have an average student age of twenty-three like SFA; the classic college age student to which SFA appeals is in large part due to residential character of the campus and the huge number of students (one third) who come from immediately surrounding counties. The largest single group come from Harris County (17%), with Nacogdoches (12%), and Dallas(6%) next.

The impact of SFA on Nacogdoches and East Texas is more than just budget expenditures, more than demographics, more than geographic changes. SFA pioneered higher education in East Texas, and through her graduates the school has left an indelible stamp on the region: the agricultural innovations in the 1920s and 30s, the certification processes for public school teachers, the band programs, the East Texas Historical Association support, the research in the wood products industries, the regional workshops, and countless other programs. The practical, non-confrontational way SFA handled many problems through the years have helped all of East Texas to take a common sense approach to life; the question of integration in the 60s, or war protests and the sexual revolution in the 70s, come to mind. As of May, 1999, SFA had granted a total of 83,090 degrees in East Texas; this figure represents 65,863 baccalaureate degrees, 17,192 masters degrees, and 35 doctorates. Since the overwhelming majority of the graudates come from immediately surrounding counties and frequently returned to the same areas, SFA has had an incalculable role in raising the quality of life in all areas of East Texas. Nacogdoches’ decision to make education the town’s core business in the Twentieth Century has proved a wise one. What Mrs. Karle Wilson Baker’s observed in 1906 must remain a relevant thought for the next century: “The spirit of Nacogdoches today is a gift from the men of the past; the spirit of the future will be the gift of the men of today.

From the Daily Sentinel, 1999