Wouldn’t this make a great Charter Day cake?

I would eat a cake decorated to look like concrete letters surrounded by green bushes. How about you? Click here for the location and history of the University of South Dakota hillside letters,

This year marks the 162nd anniversary of the establishment of the University by the first Dakota Territory Legislature in 1862, 141st anniversary of the signing of the charter in 1883, and 102 years since the letters were presented to the University of South Dakota in 1922.

Charter Day at the University is February 3rd. It commemorates the day that the governor signed “an act to provide for the organization and government of the University of the Territory of Dakota.”

You can view pictures of Charter Day celebrations in early Coyote yearbooks (LD5078 .C6). These books are in the Archives and Special Collections and in the library’s main collection.

You can read the text of the charter in Laws passed at the fifteenth session of the legislative assembly of the Territory of Dakota, 1883 (KFS3025 .A3). This book is in the Archives and Special Collections and in the library’s main collection.