Crawling over a sixty-tier wooden tower, members of the Class of 2000 will have worked for two days on the Homecoming bonfire by the time it is set ablaze tonight.
The structure, which looms over the Green, has come under restrictions in recent years.
Ken Jones, the assistant athletic director who has overseen bonfire construction since the 1970s, said the restrictions are primarily for safety.
The structure is made up of a 33-tier six-pointed star base which closes in to a 22-tier hexagon and tapers to a 7-tier square with class numerals on top, he said.
The College regulates the shape and height of the bonfire and supervises its construction.
Jones said the supervision of the bonfire creation was originally the responsibility of the First Year Office, but a former athletic director later accepted the responsibility.
The shape of the bonfire structure may have originated in the Thayer School of Engineering, Jones said.
"The structure of the bonfire is chosen for stability and is determined by the size and shape of the beams used," Engineering Professor Francis Kennedy said.
"The goal was to build something tall without nails that can hold fill inside," he said. "The weight of the tiers on top of each other is what holds the structure together."
As the structure burns, it is supposed to collapse into its star-shaped
"If the wind is not blowing, it tends to burn straight up and collapses at the end," Kennedy said. "But, with wind, it may burn through one side and collapse earlier."
Shedding Tiers
The height of the bonfire tower has come up for debate in recent years.
"It is really restricted. The number of ties required for the star and hexagon controls the overall height," Jones said. "At one time, there were no restrictions on the height and it got dangerously tall. You could actually stand and watch it sway in the breeze."
Kennedy said the structure may have been up to 90 tiers tall, and people wondered what would happen if it fell down.
In 1984, a town ordinance prohibited the Class of 1988 from building a bonfire with as many tiers as their class numerals. The height was limited to 60 feet.
The Bonfire Committee also decided to restrict the height because it had "gotten out of control," Jones said.
A maximum of 300 ties are delivered to the College and supervisors dictate the number of tiers for each part of the structure, Jones said.
The Bonfire Committee is chaired by Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia and includes representatives from the First Year Office, Safety and Security and Green Key, as well as students.
A representative from the Blunt Alumni Center is also on the committee. Blunt provides the funds for the cost of ties and transporting fill, Jones said.
The freshmen that worked on the building of the bonfire in the past have added small structures to the original tower so the total number of tiers equals their class numeral.
Last year, the Class of 1999 added pizza boxes to the structure, but Jones said that was dangerous.
"The pizza boxes piled on the structure last year to give it 99 tiers were too light-weight and could have come down on the crowd as they were burning," Jones said. "This year we are supplying tongue-depressors so the students can still keep the number of tiers equal to their year."
Everyone working on the bonfire, including supervisors, must wear hard-hats and only six people are allowed to work on top of the structure at a time, he said.
Details of Old Flames
The materials used have changed since the first bonfire at Dartmouth Night in 1895.
In the early days of the bonfire, students did not just set fire to rails of wood. A rusty car bumper and several mattresses could be found at the center of the pile from time to time.
The bonfire tradition blossomed in the 1950s when an alumnus who owned a railroad company in Portland, Maine offered free railroad ties to those students who would pick them up.
Until about seven years ago, bonfire creators used treated railroad ties in the structure, but worries about the effects of burning the chemical preservatives used in the ties prompted them to switch to untreated ties, Jones said.
Today, the ties are cut by Hammond and Sons, a lumber mill in Canaan, and the fill is mainly wooden pallets and other scrap pieces of wood from different businesses in the area, Jones said.
Jones said the cost of ties, truck rentals and the services of Safety and Security and the Facilities, Operations and Management is about $5,000.
Safety and Security guard the structure while it is being built and Facilities, Operations and Management cleans up the remains of the fire on Saturday morning.
"There is not a need to guard it while it is burning," Jones said. "The heat keeps people away from it."
Safety and Security Sergeant Mark Lancaster said an officer guards the structure on the night of construction from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. The structure is also roped off during construction.
The delivery of wood for the bonfire is also regulated by the College.
In 1993, the Student Assembly, administrators and faculty created regulations due to the 1992 Homecoming when about 600 freshmen and upperclassmen nearly caused a riot as freshmen defended the bonfire from raiding upperclassmen.
Since 1993, wood has been delivered on the Thursday before Homecoming instead of Monday, which gives students just two days to complete the 40-foot high structure.
Big Fires, Small Risk
Jones said because the bonfire has been a tradition for such a long time, the number of accidents are minimal.
"We have been building them for a long time. Many students get splinters and some have fallen off the structure," he said. "Occasionally, people have been burnt, but we have not had any severe burns."
"Most of the accidents occurred when people climbed on the structure at night, which is why Safety and Security watches it now," he said.
Student monitors insure safety and campus police on the premises during the creation of the bonfire can immediately call for help, he said.
Jones said it is dangerous for students to run around the bonfire as tradition dictates, but "it is very difficult to control 600 to 1000 students."
"We are pretty aware of the various danger potentials," he said. "We can only do so much and hope students will show their best judgment."
Assistant Director of Risks and Management Henrietta Powers said the College has been concerned about risks for a number of years.
"We've been trying to minimize the risks, injuries and property damage," Powers said.
Hanover Fire Department Chief Roger Bradley said the construction and burning of the bonfire is mostly Dartmouth-run.
"We review the outdoor activity permit for the parade that evening and have some personnel on the Green observing," Bradley said. "It is a tradition that has been going on for so many years. There are no safety issues. We've [only] had to respond due to injuries from falling off the structure."
"We beef up our staff for emergency response, but it's mostly business as usual," he said.
Business as usual dates back to the first bonfire in 1888, following a baseball victory over Manchester.
The first organized bonfire was held in 1893 after Dartmouth's football team defeated Amherst.
For many years after that, bonfires were built after football victories. Anything flammable in Hanover, including residents' fence posts, were used as fuel.
At first, the blaze was not well received by everyone and an editorial in The Dartmouth stated, "It disturbed the slumbers of a peaceful town, destroyed some good property, made the boys feel like they were men, and in fact did no one any good."
But, that view did not last long, and the bonfire has remained a significant part of the Dartmouth tradition for over 100 years.
