The development of steamboats, railroads, the telegraph, mining and metallurgy, textile production, etc., stimulated demand for trained engineers in the half century or more after the American Civil War. The Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862) was one important response in the USA. However, some private institutions also began addressing the need at about the same time (or even before). UPenn started engineering programs in the 1850s. Cornell’s college of engineering was founded in 1870. Princeton had an engineering program by 1875. Columbia established a school of mines in 1864, which was renamed the “School of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry” in 1896 (however, these programs had roots dating back to the 1700s.) JHU’s engineering programs started in 1913. Stanford’s school of engineering was established in 1926 from earlier departments (including civil engineering, which was one of the university’s original departments in 1891).
It might be considered odd that the University of Chicago, founded by a major industrialist at the height of the second industrial revolution in America, never had an undergraduate engineering major until its recently-created molecular engineering program. Then there are a couple hundred small liberal arts colleges that never added engineering programs or other trappings of a modern, comprehensive university system. It may not be a coincidence that many of them are in small outlying towns. Many schools with strong religious affiliations (including some Catholic schools and schools we now call Christian colleges) also have not developed strong engineering programs.