of land, with water privileges, within half a mile of Tempe, Maricopa County, and 9 miles from Phoenix. Contracts were let for the building at $6,497 to the lowest responsible bidder, and the completed building was delivered January 11, 1886. Then the trouble began. The governor refused to countersign any warrant for more than $5,000; a test case was made and argued before the chief justice, but no decision was made at the time; the matter seems to have been dropped, and the balance due was presumably paid later out of the regular income of the institution from the tax of 2½ cents on the hundred given by the same assembly for the erection of buildings and the support of the institution.[1]
The first building was 60 by 70 feet, and was entirely surrounded by verandas 10 feet wide; four rooms 30 feet square were then provided. The school was opened February 8, 1886, and placed under the administration of Prof. H. Bradford Farmer. In that year a four months’ term was provided, and there were 33 pupils in attendance. Tuition was free to those who intended to teach and to those nominated by a member of the legislature; other persons were charged $4 per month. The course of study began with elementary work, including reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic, history of United States, and grammar for the first year, and for the second, algebra, natural philosophy, physiology, method, essays, select readings, and declamations. There was an advanced course of three years which covered these subjects and also Latin, analysis, Constitution of the United States, Cesar, physiology, methods, Cicero, general history, geometry, rhetoric, Virgil, English literature, political economy, history and philosophy of education, essays, etc. On the completion of either of these courses a corresponding diploma was given, entitling the holder to teach in the public schools of the Territory.
It will be noticed that there was little in either of these courses which was professional in character; that the courses differed but little from regular high-school courses; that the first service of this school was evidently to furnish high-school work to such as were advanced enough and financially able to take it, in this way supplying in part the almost total lack of secondary work then in the Territory, for at that date the development of the city high schools had just begun and that of the union high schools was still a long way off.[2]
For the next 15 years the Tempe Normal School had a somewhat tempestuous career. Always well supported by the Territory in matters financial, it was nevertheless the football of politics and its usefulness was for this reason diminished. Notwithstanding these more
