The woman behind Stanford University

The little town that was beginning to rise near the zone took the name Palo Alto (tall tree) after a goliath California redwood on the bank of San Francisquito Creek. The tree itself is still there and would later transform into the school's picture and centerpiece of its official seal.

Leland Stanford, who grew up and considered law in New York, moved West after the gold rush and, similarly as other of his well off companions, made his fortune in the railroads. He was a pioneer of the Republican Party, administrative head of California and later a U.S. congressperson. He and Jane had one youngster, who kicked the can of typhoid fever in 1884 when the family was going in Italy. Leland Jr. was just 15. Within weeks of his end, the Stanfords picked that, in light of the fact that they no more could do anything for their own tyke, "the posterity of California may be our adolescents." They quickly set going to find a persisting way to deal with memorialize their dear youngster.

The Stanfords considered a couple of possible results – a school, a particular school, a chronicled focus. While on the East Coast, they passed by Harvard, MIT, Cornell and Johns Hopkins to search for direction on starting another school in California. (See note as to records of the Stanfords visit with Harvard President Charles W. Eliot.) Ultimately, they set up two foundations in Leland Junior's name - the University and a presentation lobby. From the begin they settled on some untraditional choices: the school would be coeducational, in a period when most were all-male; non-denominational, when most were joined with a religious affiliation; and avowedly rational, conveying "refined and important nation