University of Oregon campus

The campus of the University of Oregon is located in Eugene, Oregon and includes some 80 buildings and facilities, including athletics facilities such as Hayward Field, which was the site of the 2008 Olympic Track and Field Trials, and McArthur Court, and off-campus sites such as nearby Autzen Stadium and the Riverfront Research Park. An online guide to the university's built environment, Architecture of the University of Oregon, published by the University of Oregon Libraries, describes campus buildings and provides timelines of key architectural events linked with campus history.

The campus opened in Eugene on October 16, 1876, in an 18-acre former wheat field purchased from Reverend J. H. D. Henderson. Henderson's land had been part of Hilyard Shaw's original donation land claim. Work on the first campus building, named Deady Hall in 1893, would not yet be completed until 1877, and school began on the building's first floor with hammering noise and other carpenter sounds coming from the floors above. Judge Joshua J. Walton, organizer of the Union University Association, the organization responsible for bringing the university to Eugene, kept his cattle on the property even after classes began. Judge Walton later erected a fence to separate his cattle from the students. The campus had no sidewalks, only two oak trees, and a great quantity of mud.

Financial difficulties had dogged the university since before opening day, and in 1881 the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the campus could be sold to pay the debts of the university. The court also found that the conveyance of campus property from the Union University Association to the university's board of directors in 1873 and then to the Board of Regents in 1876 was made with intent to defraud the university's creditors.Henry Villard, president of the Northern Pacific Railway, averted the sale of the campus by paying many of the debts himself, and he later established a $50,000 endowment. The university's second building, Villard Hall, was constructed in 1886 and named in honor of the first benefactor.

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