“According to the Centennial Record of the University of California Frederick Billings, was reminded of the lines of Bishop Berkeley, 'westward the course of empire takes its way,' and suggested that the town and college site be named for the eighteenth-century British philosopher and poet." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley,_California)

“Upon one of [UC Berkeley’s] walls hangs a full-length portrait of the philosopher, copied by John F. Weir, from Smybert's portrait, which is owned by Yale. Thanks to the suggestions of Frederick Billings, who proposed the name and gave the portrait, Berkeley, whose enterprise upon the Atlantic seaboard came to naught in the middle of the last century, is now held in perpetual remembrance upon the Pacific coast by the grateful students of a thriving University.”
(http://www.famousamericans.net/georgeberkeley/)

George Berkeley, "Verse on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America."
"The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time.
Producing subjects worthy fame.
"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's Noblest offspring is the last." (http://r2rministries.com/history/X0082_Prophetic_Voices_Ame.html)
When Berkeley wrote that poem, he was on the East Coast trying to raise money for a college in Bermuda to be erected for the purpose of “converting the savage Americans to Christianity.” During that time, he met on numerous occasions with the American philosopher Samuel Johnson, who later became the president of Kings College, New York (now Columbia). This is not however the Samuel Johnson of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, who is reported to have refuted Berkeley’s idealism by kicking a rock.