When UCLA was named America’s most Instagrammable university in 2023, most Bruins were hardly surprised. We love sharing our pride in this campus, and not only because of its breathtaking scenery. UCLA is steeped in a special kind of living history: Royce Hall’s unmistakable facade gift-wraps a building hosting classrooms where future Nobel laureates once sat, and brick walkways echo with the footsteps of scholars who built a world-leading public university in under a century.
But when was the last time you held that living history in your hands — and felt its weight, turned its pages, and saw UCLA (and the world) through the eyes of those who came before us?
For a moment, take a detour along those storied brick walkways. North of Royce, down a set of stairs in the Charles E. Young Research Library’s special collections suite, is a portal through time. Here, within softly lit, wood-paneled walls, voices of the past come alive in archived yearbooks wrought by students since UCLA’s founding in 1919, now passed from their hands to ours.
Take volume one, a slender, gilded treasure from 1920. Leafing through its pages, laced with Art Nouveau illustrations, is as satisfying as pressing the shutter-release button on a vintage camera. That inimitable old-book smell invites you into the world of the earliest Bruins, who declared their intent to make UCLA — then known as the Southern Branch of the University of California, or the “twig” — into “a real university.” “To us has been given the pleasure and joy of pushing into the unknown,” the editors wrote. “The return is worth the effort. And though our work may be forgotten, its influence will be eternal.”
Their optimistic chorus would soon build to a triumphant roar. Open the 1941 volume, bound in cream-colored cloth, and you’ll find full-color photos that provide a panorama of yesteryear’s bustling campus. “California at Berkeley is honored as an illustrious parent whose precocious offspring is more and more asserting its independence,” the editors declared. Even as they documented their path through World War II, they celebrated Bruin victories: “Troy Falls,” they trumpeted in the 1943 volume, after UCLA’s football team first bested USC. The postwar boom would see UCLA welcome its first chancellor, a pioneering medical center, engineering and law schools and much more. Pages overflowed with homecoming parades in Westwood Village, star-studded Spring Sings at the Hollywood Bowl and legendary athletic feats.
Fast-forward to the late sixties, and the roar transforms into a tapestry of voices. The 1969 volume opens with artfully arranged snapshots interspersed with lines of poetry. That year would see the world’s first internet message sent from UCLA, its ethnic studies centers established and world-renowned speakers hosted on campus. Yearbooks had by that time lost a certain cultural cachet, but Bruins kept creating theirs, detailing not only a growing social awareness but a new understanding of what it meant to be a Bruin. “Being put shoulder to shoulder with such an astonishing variety of people can be an education in itself,” they wrote in 1975. “For we learn far more in our daily interactions with those around us than could ever be dished out in a classroom.”
Soon, voices previously unheard would begin to rise. Opening with an elegantly worded and illustrated love letter to a now-historic campus, the 1988 volume spotlights a variety of perspectives. “Our goals are to stress Black pride, unity and respect,” asserts a staff member of Nommo, one of the first ethnic publications at a U.S. public university. UCLA had by that time cemented its global status, hosted the 1984 Olympics and achieved transformative scientific breakthroughs. This era’s editors are movingly introspective about their changing world: “We’ve grown up a little or a lot at UCLA, and usually growing up hurts,” one wrote in 1991. “And yet we need to challenge ourselves to keep growing … we need to think of our responsibilities as citizens in the global community.”
The volumes don’t capture every experience — no college yearbook can — but together they are, along with the archives of the Daily Bruin, the best continuous historical narrative of our university. Bruins still pour their hearts into creating the yearbook each year, and graduating seniors look forward to receiving them. If the immediacy of our digital world provides the leaves of our shared story — always moving, changing and falling — here, then, is the tree: a photo diary of our ever-growing legacy, the accomplishments that bind us together, and the singular sense of tenacity and pride that we can’t help but share with the world.
So be transported. Open the volumes of your choice and let time stand still, again and again, year after year. These books remind us that the mark we leave on the university is engraved in gold. The return, as a wise Bruin once wrote, is worth the effort: This is a story that will be held and treasured by generations to come.
Interested in seeing the yearbook collection? Volumes are available upon request for consultation in the UCLA Library Special Collections reading room. Contact [email protected] or call (310) 825-4988 to learn more. You can access the digitized collection here.
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue.
