Through the efforts of Jay Abel Hubbell of Houghton, the school was established in 1885 to train mining engineers, metallurgists, and geologists. The hilly, sloping campus lies between Portage Lake on the north and Sharon Avenue on the south. College Avenue bisects the campus, and the concentration of academic buildings flanks a central linear mall north of College Avenue. The physical constraints of the long narrow site sandwiched between the lake and the hill forced the development of a compact walking campus and towerlike buildings, and prevented sprawl.

Major expansion has occurred since 1965 when Johnson, Johnson and Roy, landscape architects, drew up a campus plan and proposed to centralize the campus by using high-rise buildings linked by pedestrian malls. U.S. 41 was rerouted and the area south of the central campus opened for development. In 1980, the Student Development Complex was built on Fairview Street on south campus. From the beginning, Herman Gundlach and Company constructed most of the buildings. Each February since 1922 MTU has held a Winter Carnival on campus that features displays of snow statues celebrated for their size, detail, design, and building methods.