The University of California's second president, Daniel…

The University of California's second president, Daniel Coit Gilman, opens the Berkeley campus in September 1873.

Earlier that year, Toland Medical College in San Francisco had agreed to become the University's "Medical Department"; it will later evolve into UCSF.

In 1849, the state of California had ratified its first constitution, which had contained the express objective of creating a complete educational system including a state university.

Taking advantage of the Morrill Land Grant Act, the California Legislature had established an Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in 1866.

Although this institution had been provided with sufficient funds, it lacked land.

Meanwhile, Congregational minister Henry Durant, an alumnus of Yale, had established the private Contra Costa Academy, on June 20, 1853, in downtown Oakland, California, on a site site is bounded by Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets and Harrison and Franklin Streets.

In turn, the Trustees of the Contra Costa Academy had been granted a charter on April 13, 1855 for a College of California.

Hoping both to expand and raise funds, the College of California's trustees had formed the College Homestead Association and purchased one hundred and sixty acres (six hundred and fifty thousand square meters) of land in what is now Berkeley in 1866.

But sales of new homesteads had fallen short.

Governor Frederick Low had favored the establishment of a state university based upon the University of Michigan plan, and thus in one sense may be regarded as the founder of the University of California.

In 1867, he had suggested a merger of the existing College of California with the proposed state university.

On October 9, 1867, the College's trustees had reluctantly agreed to merge with the state college to their mutual advantage, but under one condition—that there not be simply a "Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College", but "a complete university", within which the College of California would become the College of Letters (now the College of Letters and Science).

Accordingly, the Organic Act, establishing the University of California, had been signed into law by Governor Henry H. Haight (Low's successor) on March 23, 1868.