University of Denver

The University of Denver is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. DU enrolls approximately 5,600 undergraduate students and 6,100 graduate students. The 125-acre main campus is a designated arboretum and is located primarily in the University Neighborhood, about five miles south of downtown Denver.

In March, 1864, John Evans, former Governor of the Colorado Territory, appointee of President Abraham Lincoln, founded the Colorado Seminary in the newly created city of Denver, which was then a mining camp. At its founding the seminary was non-sectarian and operated by Methodist Episcopal church. It struggled in the early years of its existence. In 1880 it was renamed the University of Denver. Although doing business as the University of Denver, DU is still legally named Colorado Seminary. The first buildings of the university were located in downtown Denver in the 1860s and 1870s, but concerns that Denver's rough-and-tumble frontier town atmosphere was not conducive to education prompted a relocation to the current campus, built on the donated land of potato farmer Rufus Clark, some seven miles south of the downtown core. The university grew and prospered alongside the city's growth, appealing primarily to a regional student body prior to World War II. After the war, the large surge in GI bill students pushed DU's enrollment to over 13,000 students, the largest the university has ever been, and helped to spread the university's reputation to a national audience.

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