In 1897, the Utah Legislature provided for a teachers training or normal school in southern Utah and selected Cedar City as its site in March. Because no school building existed in the fall of 1897, classes for the new Branch Normal School were held in the Cedar City Ward hall during the 1897-98 school year. At Christmas time in 1897, the legislature informed the city that it had to have a school building by the fall of 1898 or lose the school. With virtually no local timber resources, Cedar City residents organized a winter lumbering expedition to bring lumber from the Jensen Sawmill during January, February, and March of 1898 to build the structure now known as Old Main on the campus of Southern Utah University. Thirty-five loggers, sawyers, and haulers carried out the mountain work, while the success of the effort also depended on the devoted labor of 1500 citizens of Cedar City. Women and young ladies baked and made butter and cheese for the mill workers and darned wool clothing to keep them warm; men gathered hay and grain, donated horses, wagons, and equipment, and worked on the building; and young boys gathered firewood and coal to fire the bricks and did farm chores so their fathers could work on the project. Old Main stands as a memorial to the community's sacrifice and its belief in the importance of education, and the building was renovated in 1975.