The Morrill Act of 1862, signed by Abraham Lincoln, established the land grant university with a Solomon-like simplicity: the federal government would deed large tracts of land to establish public colleges in each state. These institutions would then train young citizens in agriculture, forestry, mining and the mechanical arts--fields tied directly to the prosperity of the nation at the time. Land grant universities today are emerging as leaders in the sustainability movement. They have deep historic ties to stewardship of land and water resources; their faculties--specializing in innumerable fields now thought of as environmental--make them living laboratories for the latest thinking in green design and planning. In this article, the authors present the University of Maine as an example of how today's land-grant universities can do for environmental topics what their predecessors did for agriculture and mechanical arts.