News
This weekend marks a monumental event in the history of the College as Dartmouth celebrates a century of the Homecoming tradition.
The festivities will officially commence tonight, the 100th Dartmouth Night in College history, on the Green with the quintissential Dartmouth tradition -- the burning of the bonfire.
From its innocent and humble beginnings, Homecoming has become the most sacred and celebrated tradition on the Hanover plain.
In its 100 years, Homecoming has seen everything from brawls and bomb scares to confusion and controversy.
In the beginning...
One-hundred years ago, College President William Jewett Tucker welcomed the Class of 1899 to the first-ever Dartmouth Night, which was held in Dartmouth Hall.
On that night in September 1895, Tucker gave his blessing to the Dartmouth Night gathering, saying it would "promote class spirit and would initiate freshmen into the community."
The first bonfire actually took place in 1888 when a jubilant crowd of Dartmouth faithful celebrated a baseball victory over Manchester by throwing anything they could get their hands on into a pile on the Green and setting it ablaze.
An editorial in The Dartmouth following the blaze denounced the act: "It 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."
Bonfire celebrations were usually spontaneous in the late eighties and early nineties, until the first organized blaze was held in 1893 after a 34-0 drubbing of Amherst by the football team.
In the early days of the bonfire, students did not just set fire to rails of wood.
In fact, it has been said that a rusty car bumper and several mattresses could be found at the center of the pile from time to time.
The first Dartmouth Night in 1895 was described by The Dartmouth as "one of the most delightful and interesting events which the undergraduate body has had the honor of participating in."
At the second annual Dartmouth Night in 1896, "Men of Dartmouth," written by Richard Hovey '85, was adopted as the official College song.
Dartmouth Night soon featured a distinguished speaker, lengthy speeches from alumni and the reading of telegrams from alumni from all around the world.
In 1907, the Dartmouth Night festivities were moved into the newly-finished Webster Hall.
Now the alumni speeches and the address of the night's distinguished speaker are held in front of Dartmouth Hall.
In 1904 yet another tradition was born as the freshman class ran around the bonfire as it burned.
In fact, the enthusiastic Class of 1908 circled the bonfire in their pajamas, while the rest of the College, Lord Dartmouth and Winston Churchill, looked on.
Wars and Pranks
Wars have had an impact on Homecoming weekend over the years.
In 1943, American involvement in World War II forced a scaled-down Homecoming celebration.
Not included in the shortened celebrations were the still-traditional reading of telegrams from alumni unable to attend Homecoming.
The Vietnam War, which fostered a lack of interest in Dartmouth Night during the late 1960s, forced the event to go on a five-year hiatus, from 1967 to 1971.
In the 1950s, the president of the Central Railroad Company in Portland, Maine, who was a Dartmouth alumnus, breathed life into the bonfire tradition.
Central Railroad offered free railroad ties to the College for the building of the bonfire, but only to those students who came to Portland to pick up the wood.
