1957 – Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station
Ohio State University Archives Collection

In 1882, The Ohio State University established the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station and incorporated it with the university farm in Columbus. William R. Lazenby and Norton S. Townshend divided their time between classroom teaching and research on the station’s land. The Hatch Act of 1887 provided separate federal funding to support experiment stations, and under the leadership of Director Charles Thorne, the experiment station relocated to Wooster in 1892. State forester Edmund Secrest became the Station’s third director from 1937 until his retirement in 1948. Secret had worked for the experiment station since 1905, and directed most of the state’s reforestation programs. He also developed the Wooster Arboretum (later named the Secrest Arboretum) into one of the nation’s leading long-term plant repositories. The experiment station was renamed Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Centers in 1965 and merged with The Ohio State University in 1982.