BYU sits in Provo rather than Salt Lake City thanks to two brothers' educational endeavors in Utah Valley.
Warren Dusenberry purchased $50 worth of books and other school supplies and opened a school in Provo, where he began teaching with his brother, Wilson, in 1863.
As the school grew, the brothers moved class to the Lewis Building on Third West and Center Street. The three-story building with only two usable floors yielded a total of 5,600 gross square feet. This campus would later become Brigham Young Academy-the forerunner of BYU.
When enrollment at Dusenberry's school reached 300, he and Robert Campbell, the superintendent of territory schools, converted his school into the Timpanogos branch of Salt Lake City's University Deseret.
The Timpanogos branch of the University Deseret, while short-lived proved a school of that magnitude could survive in Provo, thus contributing to the academy's founding.
The University of Deseret became a state institution in 1892, changing its name to the University of Utah.
And Brigham Young became the owner of the Lewis building in October 1875. He made the school a separate institution from the University of Deseret and renamed it Brigham Young Academy.
"President Brigham Young felt it in his heart that an educational system ought to be inaugurated in Zion in which, as he put it in his terse way of saying things, neither the alphabet nor the multiplication table should be taught without the Spirit of God," said Karl G. Maeser, emeritus president of BYU, at Brigham Young Academy's first Founders Day exercises.
Brigham Young wrote to his son, Alfales Young, in 1875 regarding the school.
"I hope to see an Academy established in Provo that shall do honor to our Territory, and at which the children of the Latter-day Saints can receive a good education unmixed with the pernicious atheistic influences that are found in so many of the higher schools of the country."
Warren Dusenberry became the first principal of Brigham Young Academy, with the understanding that he would only serve during an experimental term until administrators appointed a permanent principal.
After serving from October 1875 to April 1876, Dusenberry left to practice law, recommending Maeser as his successor.
Dusenberry preferred law's controversy and financial security to education, according to a BYU news release.
Though the fledgling academy continued to encounter other problems, including the Lewis building burning down in 1882, Dusenberry's initial effort stimulated higher education in Utah Valley and its Mormon population.
Regardless of the changes and developments BYU goes through, it must cling to one constant principle: the spirit of the latter-day work, Maeser said.
"As long as this principle shall be the mainspring of all her labors, whether in teaching the alphabet or the multiplication tables, or unfolding the advanced truths of science and art, the future of Brigham Young Academy will surpass in glory the fondest hopes of her most ardent admirers," he said.
Copyright Brigham Young University 16 Apr 2003
