More than 100 years have passed since 1895 when College President William Jewett Tucker introduced Dartmouth Night to the College.
Though Dartmouth Night was renamed Homecoming in the 1980s, the spirit and traditions of the special night -- especially the bonfire -- still retain a special place in the hearts of alumni and students alike.
Early bonfires: the birth of tradition
The role of the bonfire has evolved over time to its current status as a focal point of Homecoming celebration.
Though some discrepancy exists as to when the first bonfire was built, the earliest-recorded bonfire occurred in 1888 when a Dartmouth baseball victory over Manchester College excited die-hard fans to celebrate by throwing anything they could get their hands on into a pile on the Green and igniting it.
The first organized bonfire was held in 1893, when the football team defeated Amherst College by a whopping 34 points.
The bonfire did not become integrated into Dartmouth Night tradition until 1946.
In that year the tradition of first-year students building the bonfire originated, the bonfire to be built by first-year students.
In the 1950s bonfires were held much more frequently than the once-a-year blow-out they currently entail. Students built a bonfire at every football game rally when wood was plentiful.
Wood was not the only thing dragged into the bonfires, however. A rusty car bumper and old mattresses could occasionally be found among the charred remains.
The president of the Central Railroad Company, a Dartmouth alumnus, offered free railroad ties to ignite the College flame, but only to those students who would pick them up in Portland, Maine. Busloads of students made the pilgrimage to gather the wood every year.
In 1958 the railroad tie supply was depleted and the director of the bonfire charged the students with the responsibility of maintaining the tradition. "Each man in the College now shares the responsibility. This is not just a matter of a rally bonfire. This is a College tradition," he said.
A local farmer came to the rescue by donating his barn to go up in flames.
In the 1970s an even stranger fixture was used as firewood. A large church steeple donated to the College served as the wood source amidst controversy over the recent change in mascot from the Indians to the Big Green.
An angry associate dean who thought students had placed a teepee on the bonfire, stormed out of Parkhurst Hall demanding an explanation.
The memories: pranks and incidents
The pranks and odd occurrences traditionally associated with the bonfire are rich in tradition as well and have their own place in Dartmouth Night history.
In 1904, two distinguished visitors were present to observe Dartmouth history in the making. Winston Churchill and Lord Dartmouth were special guests at the Dartmouth Night ceremony in 1904 when pajama-clad students raced around the bonfire for the first time establishing a new bonfire tradition.
Some classes did more than just run around the bonfire. In 1956, freshmen saved their energy and simply roasted hot-dogs on the fire instead of sprinting around it. In 1952 over 100 freshmen defiantly tossed their beanies atop the flames. Luckily the senior society Palaeopitus was able to supply them with new ones.
Threatening 'the watch'
Bonfire history is also marked with incidents of sabotage and upper-classmen raids on the bonfire.
Dartmouth Outing Club pranksters played a joke on the freshmen by replacing the kerosene used to light the fire with water.
The fire blazed temporarily but went out when someone threw more "kerosene" on it, delaying the lighting for 20 minutes until DOC members gave in and told the freshmen where to find the kerosene.
In 1976, the bonfire was lit three days prior to the scheduled Dartmouth Night event but firefighters did not respond to the call.
Students attempted to extinguish the flames with residence hall fire extinguishers but did not succeed.
Incidents of violence threatened to discontinue the bonfire tradition in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1983, a dynamite scare forced the Class of 1987 to dismantle the structure piece by piece. Fortunately, no explosives were found and the bonfire was rebuilt.
In 1987, a group of about ten women calling themselves "Womyn to Overthrow Dartmyth" dressed as witches, painted skulls on their faces and protested during Dartmouth Night by throwing red hard-boiled eggs in front of the speaker's podium.
Eggs were thrown again, this time with shaving cream, as students protested against the College's restrictive alcohol policy in 1991. Some of the protestors, who had earlier tried and failed to dissuade the Class of 1995 from building a bonfire, handcuffed themselves to the structure and repeatedly shouted, "We want kegs."
The tradition of upper-class sabotage turned to violence the following year when a drunken riot broke out between the freshmen and upper-class vandals.
When upperclassmen threatened to storm the bonfire, approximately 600 students, many of whom were heavily intoxicated, engaged in acts of destruction, wielding baseball bats and hockey sticks.
The Freshmen sweep of 1993 also elicited destructive behavior from the Class of 1997, who jumped on the roofs of cars and uprooted street signs along their journey.
Recent trends: the current bonfire
In recent years, changes have been made to ensure the safety of students and the continuation of the bonfire and Homecoming rituals.
The bonfire building is now down to a science. Timbers arrive on Thursday the morning of the bonfire and construction continues until about 2 p.m. on Friday. Eight-foot-long, six-by-six inch timbers are delivered by the truckload to the Green.
The timbers are ordered specifically for the Homecoming Bonfire. They are cut at the end of the winter and set out in the yard to dry, according to Steve Erickson, assistant director of the Physical Education Department.
The current structure for the bonfire was designed by the Thayer School of Engineering to collapse inward as it burns. The base consists of a 33-tiered, six-pointed star. Above rests 22 tiers of a hexagon pattern, followed by a 7-tiered square.
The timbers are stacked overlapping without any fasteners. No nails are used at all in the framework, Erickson said. The interior of the framework is loaded with pallets and other small wood is used as fill.
Ten or 11 upperclassmen will oversee the building of the bonfire. As the tiers are layered and the structure rises, fill is stacked in the interior of the bonfire. At 62 tiers, the structure is quite tall, so the freshmen builders must suspend themselves from the sides of the structure to maneuver pallets and timbers up to students at the top.
The number of tiers formerly coincided with the graduation year of the freshmen building the bonfire. In the mid-1980s a restriction was placed on the height of the structure, limiting it to 62 tiers or about 60 feet.
To boost the number of tiers to match their year, students have become ingenious --popsicle sticks, pizza boxes and tongue depressors have all been put to use in composing the final tiers.
Freshmen are saved from around-the-clock guard duty to prevent raids by upperclassmen. Safety and Security officers are now placed out on the Green to guard the structure and dispel any attempted attacks.
Six specially-selected '02s will simultaneously ignite the base of the fire -- one at each point of the star. The kerosene doused base will slowly catch fire and the interior fill will ignite.
Erickson said it generally takes about 45 minutes for the bonfire to collapse depending on the dryness of the wood and wind conditions.
New traditions continue to develop as the bonfire-ritual is passed down through Dartmouth generations. Since timbers replaced railroad ties, students have demonstrated their spirit and creativity by writing on the beams. In recent years, the dangerous tradition of running up and touching the bonfire as it burns has developed.
The bonfire has changed during the century since its beginning. Tonight, a new class of Dartmouth students will celebrate the ceremony rich in College history. The 103rd bonfire illuminates many long-standing traditions. Its embers will initiate the Class of 2002 into the glory and pride of Dartmouth, perhaps sparking embers for new traditions to be laid alongside the old.
