Get To Know A Marquette Basketball Opponent: Valparaiso

Name: Valparaiso University

Location: Valparaiso, Indiana

So they just stole their name from the city, huh? Yep, and if we’re being honest, the city didn’t come up with the name on their own anyway. The city was founded in 1836 as Portersville and it was the county seat for Porter County. The change came in 1837, in honor of David Porter, the county and thus city namesake, as he had captained the USS Essex in the Battle of Valparaiso as part of the War of 1812 near the city of the same name in Chile.

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Wait a second.

[double checks who was on which side in the War of 1812]

[double checks the geographical location of Chile]

And that’s the story of how I learned about the Pacific Ocean Theater of a war between the United States and England.

Founded: 1859, because the residents raised $11,000 so the Methodist Church would establish a college in their city. The first classes were held at Valparaiso Male and Female College — no, seriously — on September 21, 1859.

But not continuous: Financial troubles led to the closing of the college in 1871, but Henry Baker Brown revived things in 1873 under the name Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute. Look, maybe that was okay in the 1870s, but that sounds like a scam here in 2025, even with the fact that doing these history bits has informed me that “Normal School” is old-timey language for “teachers college.”

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Okay, so…. The Valparaiso name came back in 1900 as Valparaiso College, and the school reorganized as Valparaiso University six years later.

Still not done: Apparently more financial problems very nearly led to then-university president Horace Evans selling the college to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. This was in 1923, one year before Notre Dame students fought the Klan in South Bend, 50ish miles to the northeast. That deal was never finalized, and the Lutheran University Association bought the college in 1925 instead.

Lutherans 1, Methodists, 0.

Enrollment: 2,451 for Fall 2025,…

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Publish date : 2025-12-02 01:00:00

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