Tonight, as the class of 2007 runs around the bonfire, they will be honoring a Dartmouth tradition so old that it predates Dartmouth Night and formalized Homecoming.
The first makeshift bonfire occurred in 1888 when students decided to celebrate a 3-2 Dartmouth baseball victory over Manchester College. Students collected whatever they could find and lit it in the middle of the Green. The Dartmouth reported then that the event "disturbed the slumbers of a peaceful town, destroyed some property, made the boys feel that they were men, and, in fact, did no one any good."
In 1893, the College had its first organized bonfire to celebrate a football victory over Amherst College.
The bonfire has attracted many to Dartmouth Night festivities, including Winston Churchill and Lord Dartmouth, who were special guests in 1904. That year, they witnessed the birth of a new tradition as pajama-clad students ran around the bonfire.
Only in 1946 did first-year Dartmouth students begin to build the fire. The first bonfires were constructed with any flammable material students could get their hands on -- students had to find their own fuel -- but in the 1950s, an alumnus who owned a railroad company in Maine offered free railroad ties for the event, and a new tradition was born.
A local farmer even donated his barn to be used for the 1971 fire. Students arrived at what they supposed was the correct barn, but when they discovered a stockpile of wood inside, they discovered they had no need to burn the barn. Two days later, a different farmer stormed into Dartmouth with the Hanover police, claiming that his wood had been stolen.
During the 1950s, bonfires were held much more frequently than once a year. In fact, students built a bonfire at every football game rally when wood was plentiful.
The bonfire's history is chock-full of trickery, strange incidents and even violence.
In 1968, three members of the Dartmouth Outing Club replaced the kerosene that was to be used to light the fire with water. This delayed the lighting of the bonfire for 20 minutes.
In 1980, the bonfire was prematurely lit and burned for two days.
And in 1983, the class of 1987 was forced to disassemble their bonfire piece by piece after a bomb scare, so that officials could search for dynamite.
Some years, freshmen did even more that just running around the lit bonfire. In 1952, for example, over 100 students defiantly tossed their beanies into the bonfire, and in 1956, many freshmen chose to roast hot dogs on the flame.
In 1991, a group of students who disagreed with the College's new policy of banning open alcohol sources handcuffed themselves to the bonfire shouting, "We want kegs! We want kegs!"
Dartmouth students have typically been able to boisterously celebrate the bonfire despite pranks and technical glitches on Dartmouth Night. There have been, however, some years during which extreme circumstances have dictated otherwise.
The World Wars led to scaled-down ceremonies as the focus shifted to concern for the troops abroad. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel forced the bonfire to be cancelled, and again, in 1963, the bonfire was cancelled by order of the Hanover Fire Department because of a terrible dry spell.
During the late 1960s, Dartmouth Night and bonfire festivities were abandoned altogether out of a lack of interest.
Today's bonfire celebration is undoubtedly different from those of yesteryear. There are no longer any hundred-tiered bonfires because of safety restrictions -- the last one was built in 1979. The bonfire is now built over days, rather than weeks. Construction ends at dusk, and first-year students no longer guard their bonfire from upperclassmen while it is being built.
The bonfire structure is no longer makeshift, but rather built according to a design -- said to originate in the Thayer School of Engineering -- that allows the structure to collapse inward as it burns, raising fewer safety concerns.
First-year students are now led through the freshmen sweep by the Green Key Honor Society and Safety and Security. This change was prompted by an incident in 1993, in which several first-year students vandalized downtown Hanover during the sweep, trampling cars and destroying street signs.
Licyau Wong contributed to this report.
