Elon College was established by the Christian Connection, which later turned into a piece of the United Church of Christ. The contract for Elon College was issued by the North Carolina lawmaking body in 1889. William S. Long was the first president, and the first understudy body comprised of 76 understudies. In 1923, a flame decimated a large portion of the grounds, including school records, classrooms, the library, and the house of prayer. The Board of Trustees voted to revamp quickly. A hefty portion of the structures that were raised in the years taking after the flame still stand and make up the bedrock of Elon's grounds.
In the mid 1970s, Elon was an undergrad school serving principally neighborhood occupants driving from family homes, drawing in "territorial understudies of normal capacity from groups of unobtrusive means." By the begin of the 21st century, then again, around 68 percent of Elon's understudies originated from out-of-state and were just acknowledged on the off chance that they met high scholarly measures. Elon is a particular college and, starting 2013, 82% of approaching understudies were from out of state. Elon's change was the subject of a scholastic study by George Keller of the University of Pennsylvania titled Transforming a College: The Story of a Little Known College's Strategic Climb to National Distinction. The study, distributed by Johns Hopkins University Press, portrayed how Elon effectively changed itself from an unremarkable school to a particular, broadly perceived college.