Blue Mont Central College

Blue Mont Central College

Sketch of Blue Mont Central College
Active	1858–1863
Affiliation	Methodist
President	Joseph Denison
Location	Manhattan, Kansas

Blue Mont Central College was a private, Methodist institute of higher learning located in Manhattan, Kansas, in the United States. The college was incorporated in February 1858, and was the forerunner of Kansas State University.

After Kansas became a U.S. state in 1861, the directors of Blue Mont Central College offered the school's three-story building and 120 acres (0.49 km²) of its property to the State of Kansas to become the state's university. A bill accepting this offer easily passed the Kansas Legislature in 1861, but was controversially vetoed by Governor Charles L. Robinson of Lawrence, and an attempt to override the veto in the legislature failed by two votes. In 1862, another bill to accept the offer failed by one vote. Finally, on the third attempt, on February 16, 1863, the state enacted a law accepting the college building and grounds, and establishing the state's land-grant college at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University. Blue Mont Central College ceased operations later that year after the school term was completed.

The founding of the college was intertwined with the efforts of the New England Emigrant Aid Company to establish the town of Manhattan, Kansas, in 1855 as part of the effort to keep Kansas Territory from becoming a slave state.

The co-founder of the Emigrant Aid Company, Eli Thayer, wrote that the towns established by the Company should emphasize education: "to go with all our free-labor trophies: churches and schools, printing presses, steam-engines, and mills; and in a peaceful contest convince every poor man from the South of the superiority of free labor." Among the founders of Manhattan was Isaac Goodnow, a professor from Providence, Rhode Island. Goodnow led the New England Emigrant Aid Company's efforts to create a college in Manhattan.