When you have a little time, look up the name of a school there, the person who the school is named after, and find out who they are and why that particular department or that particular building is named as it is. Interesting history, interesting history at BYU. There are some incredible people that these buildings are named after, so that's kind of a cool thing to do.
Here's some cool history about BYU campus. You'll probably learn this in freshman orientation or whatever, but did you know the Provo library over by University Ave and like 500, that was the first BYU academy before BYU campus existed. That was BYU, that library. Then they went up onto the hill where campus is now, and there's actually the testing center, the communications building, what's it called, and the Maser building. Those three buildings on the very south end of campus were like the first BYU buildings, and it was like the testing center was the first library, and then campus just kind of expanded northward. At one point BYU was in a warehouse, and then that warehouse caught on fire. So yeah, BYU, it's come a long way from just the Provo library.
Fun fact about that, uh, the big Y is that, like, that big Y was actually made by a bunch of, like, I think seniors that were attending early BYU, and they thought, oh, this is going to be a fantastic idea, and then if you actually go into, like, one of the buildings, I can't remember which one, but it comes with, like, there's a picture there of just everybody just struggling to build this Y, and it took, like, so much longer than they thought it would take, and they're just like, never again, we're making this Y perfect because we're never touching it again, so that's an interesting fun fact about the school.
Did you know that in September of 2016, Jamal Williams set the record for the most rushing yards in a BYU football game versus Toledo and he had a record-breaking 286 rushing yards in one single game with several touchdowns that game and he made himself known as one of the greatest people in BYU football history at that game.
Did you know that the Y on the Y Mountain was actually supposed to be BYU? Back when they first started trying to paint that, they had put up tons and tons of buckets of paint through this big assembly line and they had just barely gotten the Y outlined and they realized this is going to be a lot more work than they thought it was going to be. So they decided to just stick with the Y and that's how the iconic Y on the mountain came to be.
I had the awesome opportunity to attend while Ty Detmer was the quarterback for the football team and those were great years for BYU with the Heisman Award winner, etc. It was particularly fun for me as a student athlete because I got to be among those people and I got to be among that football team and associate with some of those people and they were just a lot of fun. That was a great football team full of just great, great people and it was a great part of history in BYU to have a player like Ty and to get national recognition through the Heisman Trophy and it was just, it's a cool part of BYU history and I'm glad I got to experience that and be there during those years.
Did you know Brigham Young University actually had two other names and locations? In 1869, it was formed as the University of Deseret branch and they met in a place called the Lewis Building and it was actually more popular than even the main campus. In 1875, the school was then converted into Brigham Young Academy, which is this is actually commonly held as the founding of BYU. In 1884, the Lewis Building burned down from an experiment in the chemistry lab and classes had to be held in three separate locations until 1892 when a new brick building was constructed for Brigham Young Academy and that actually still stands today and it's the Provo Library in downtown Provo. Finally, in 1903, the name was changed to BYU and it grew into the university that we know and love today.
My great-grandpa, Harvey Fletcher, was part of the design team for the Y up on the mountain. Initially it was supposed to say BYU, but they started with the big Y in the middle, and it was just, it was so much work that they just gave up on that and just left the Y. So having it just be a Y on the mountain was not the initial plan, but a practical choice was made not to put the B and the U up there too.