Looking back at the history of Sacramento State, 76 years after its founding

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Today marks the birth of an institution that’s made a huge impact on Sacramento. 

Sacramento State was founded on Sept. 22, 1947. Initially founded with space on Sacramento City College’s campus, it had 235 students and five full-time faculty members on its first day of instruction. At the time, it also only offered 44 classes and 11 major or minor programs — one of which was home economics.

Sac State’s story reaches back even earlier to the 1920s, when political efforts to bring a university to Sacramento were repeatedly shot down by Bay Area lawmakers, according to a history of the university published in 1987. But Sacramentans didn’t stop: Then-Senator Earl Desmond (born in Sacramento himself) finally got legislation passed to establish California’s capital university in 1947, and school started two months later. The university was first called Sacramento State College. 

Just a few years after it opened, Sac State administration decided it needed its own space. In 1951, construction began on the university’s current campus, which at the time was farmland where peaches and hops were being grown. Construction wrapped up and students began attending classes at the new campus the next year.

Herky the Hornet — the school’s incredibly muscular mascot — was also born the same year that the university was founded. Members of the student council and athletics department chose Herky (short for Hercules) the Hornet over the elk, which they deemed not aggressive enough. 

Over the years, the mascot has changed, depicting various campus sports and activities from cheerleading to football to ROTC and beyond. And as with Herky, style norms on campus certainly looked different than they do now. The 1950 Herky Handbook outlined campus dress code requirements: “Women wear cotton dresses, skirts, sweaters, suits and flats.” 

Sac State isn’t without its flaws, and among them are its ties to Charles Goethe, a famous Nazi apologist and eugenicist who was deeply involved with the university in its early years. 

Goethe was well-known at the time for his racist views — he founded the Eugenics Society of Northern California in the 1930s. Yet, the university “cultivated a close relationship with the aging Goethe, courting him for his money and prestige,” wrote Tony Platt in the academic journal Social Justice in 2005. 

In turn, he donated to several early university projects, like the move to the current campus and the construction of its arboretum, which was named the Goethe Arboretum until 2005, when a group of students started a petition to change its name to the University Arboretum. Sac State has distanced itself from the Goethe name, changing the titles of buildings and removing mentions of him on its website, but that legacy remains.

Still, Sac State’s impact on the region can’t be ignored. It’s a commuter university for many — recent data showed that 44% of the Sacramento State student population in 2022 was from right here in Sacramento County. 

Sac State’s student body is also incredibly diverse — much like the region it seeks to serve — and 2019 data from U.S. News & World Report found it is the fourth most diverse campus on the West Coast.

The tree-lined campus has seen some pretty notable names walk its paths: Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at the university less than six months before his assassination. And Tom Hanks, Lester Holt, Creed Bratton, Wayne Thiebaud and Ryan Coogler are among those who have spent time as Sac State students. 

The university has also graduated lawmakers like Joe Serna, a former Sacramento mayor, and Robert Rivas, the current state Assembly speaker, along with local business leaders like Dale Carlsen, the founder of Sleep Train Mattress Centers, and Angelo Tsakopoulos, a local real estate mogul.

Editor’s note: CapRadio is licensed to Sacramento State, which is also an underwriter.