On the corner of Hearst Avenue and Gayley Road, in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, lies the Founders' Rock, the spot, according to college lore, where the 12

trustee Trustee (or the holding of a trusteeship) is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, is a synonym for anyone in a position of trust and so can refer to any individual who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility to ...

s of the College of California, the nascent

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, stood on April 16, 1860, to dedicate the property they had just purchased. This is, supposedly, the same spot where

Frederick Billings Frederick H. Billings (September 27, 1823 – September 30, 1890) was an American lawyer, financier, and politician. He is best known for his legal work on land claims during the early years of California's statehood and his presidency of the ...

stood in 1866 when he remembered

Bishop Berkeley George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immateri ...

's verse — "Westward the course of empire takes its way" — and thus inspired the name of the new city. A plaque was put on this spot on Charter Day in 1896.

References

University of California, Berkeley National Register of Historic Places in Berkeley, California Natural features on the National Register of Historic Places {{AlamedaCountyCA-NRHP-stub