Odessa lawyer and first chair of the Texas Historical Commission John Ben Sheppard led the effort to secure a branch of the University of Texas for Odessa, authorized by the Texas legislature in 1969. Instruction began in 1973, and the Mesa Building, the primary campus building, was completed in 1977 by Peters and Fields with Jessen Associates. The Mesa Building rises above the campus’s open, undulating terrain on a high, rocky, terraced embankment that encloses the garage. It consists of a pair of three-story structures, each an equilateral triangle in plan, joined at one angle to form a megastructure. Faceted, concrete circulation towers anchor each point of the two triangles. Top-floor windows are deeply recessed behind parallel precast concrete spandrel and parapet bands, and second- and first-floor windows are recessed even farther behind column lines.
At the north edge of campus at Preston Smith and Duck Pond roads, limestone from a local quarry was used to construct a replica of Stonehenge in 2004. The ground plan matches the original, while the standing stones rise 70 percent in height to those on Salisbury Plain.