(click to enlarge photos)


Ninety-seven years have passed between these two games? The game played “then” was the first in Husky Stadium, brand new in 1920 when the Dartmouth College Indians from Hanover New Hampshire beat the Huskies 28 to 7.

Besides a few points, the most important thing missing in 1920 was a bridge, a way for fans to readily get to the new stadium from the more populated south side of its intimate neighbor, the Lake Washington Ship Canal (1916). For the Dartmouth game the Huskies graduate manager, Dar Meisnest improvised a row of barges that would only temporarily block shipping. Meisnest was also a leading promoter for the Gothic Montlake Bridge first opened in 1925. It is the last of the bascules to span the canal.

Husky Stadium has also hosted a few performances without footballs. In 1923 hundreds of local pastor-led Christian thespians staged a passion play before forty thousand on a stage that filled the


west end zone. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh buzzed the stadium in his Spirit of St. Louis, and after landing at Sandpoint took the short ride to the stadium in a yacht for a “visit” with about 30,000 admirers.

For lifting spirits on the home front, civilian-defense workers produced a mock “Bombing of Seattle” by a squadron of P-38 fighters firing blanks on faux but flammable homes and businesses built and ignited on the playing field (not by the fighters) for the spectacle of destruction. The fake but fiery bombing of June 13, 1943 was well attended.
For his repeat Jean chose the Husky’s game with the Utah Utes on the Saturday night of November 18 last. With the last minute victory of 33 to 30, Husky quarterback Jake Browning broke the UW career record for touchdown passes (now with seventy-seven.) We wonder how many football games have been played on this gridiron since its 1920 loss to the Ivy League, and how many of those were won by the Pacific Northwest lads. Given the ripening now of another Husky centennial we expect that the athletic department’s public relations statisticians will to come forth with answers by 2020.
WEB EXTRAS
I took a few panoramic shots of the stadium in 2013 – back when there were day games! Here’s my fave:

Anything to add, fellahs? Yup – more of the same: neighborhood shots of yore pulled for your Horatian pleasures by Ron Edge and myself.
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HIS MARK BY FISH REMARKS ON UW FOOTBALL SUBSTITUTIONS IN 1947 [October 12, 1947]

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