Oldest University in Texas: Southwestern

Southwestern University claims a title no other school in Texas can: the oldest university in the state, tracing its roots to a Methodist charter granted in 1840, six years before Texas was even a full-fledged part of the Union in the eyes of many settlers. Chartered in its consolidated form in 1875 and built here in Georgetown of golden local limestone, its campus is a compact catalog of collegiate architecture — Romanesque towers, a landmark administration building, and the fraternity houses of a classic 19th-century college town. This drive links the university's founding sites, its signature buildings, two historic Greek-letter chapters, and a nearby church that grew up alongside the campus. It's the story of how a frontier state built a place of higher learning almost as soon as it built anything at all.