The University of Queensland Gatton Campus was established in 1897 at Gatton as the Queensland Agricultural College. The College initially operated as a tertiary agricultural institution offering a basic practical and theoretical agricultural education for young men and short courses for farmers on specific topics, but from its inception, there was also an expectation that the College would be involved in agricultural research and experimentation. In 1922, it was re-structured as the Gatton Agricultural High School and College. From 1927, the College also took students from the University of Queensland for a year of practical experience. During the Second World War, the College was used as a field hospital by the United States Army from 1942 to 1944. After the war, it continued to operate as both a secondary and tertiary institution until the high school section was closed in 1962. In the 1960s the college began to diversify the courses on offer and the first women students enrolled in 1969. In 1990, the College merged with the University of Queensland.
The need to establish an agricultural college was first raised in Queensland Parliament in 1874 by Edward Wilmot Pechey, MLA for the Darling Downs. The development of scientific methods of agricultural production appropriate to Queensland was of both public and political concern and calls for a college and experimental farm continued to be made in the Parliament for the next two decades. Unlike the debate over the establishment of a university which divided those in favour of practical, applied education from those supporting humanist education for its own sake, agricultural education was widely supported in recognition of the essential role of primary production in the colony. It was also seen as a means to attract more people to settle and cultivate the land and it was proposed that several colleges were required to investigate agricultural methods for the various regions and climatic conditions in Queensland.
The Queensland Department of Agriculture was established in 1887 and teaching and research into agriculture was part of its early agenda. Following a request from the Queensland Government to the United States Government in 1889, Professor Edward Shelton of Kansas State Agricultural College was appointed as agricultural instructor for Queensland in 1890. After touring agricultural education institutions in other Australian colonies, Professor Shelton advocated the establishment of a local college in his first annual report.
The Australian-wide economic depression of the early 1890s frustrated attempts to utilise the £5000 allocated by the Queensland Parliament in 1891 to the founding of a college, and it was not until 1895 that the first 600 acres of land were purchased by Peter McLean, Under-Secretary of Agriculture. The land was part of the Rosewood Estate near Gatton, which the Government re-purchased under the provisions of the Agricultural Lands Purchase Act of 1894. A further 1092 acres were acquired in 1896 when the new Minister for Agriculture, Colonel Andrew Joseph Thynne, was determined to make the college a reality. The site was chosen both for its proximity by rail to Brisbane (and to the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock and its experts) and for its diversity of soil types. Three soil types were present on the site, providing scope for experimentation and wide cultivation experience for students. The Gatton site was also close to the greatest concentration of farmers in the colony. As the land was virgin forest, a contract was let in 1896 for the clearing and grubbing of 233 acres.