Thanksgiving Day Tragedy

The largest ever American sporting event disaster happened at the Cal versus Stanford football game, where over 20 people perished and most at the game didn't know about it until long after the contest ended.

It is a big game when Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley play a contest on the gridiron. The rivalry has been fondly named “The Big Game.” One of these meetings had one of the most tragic in-game situations ever in the game's history.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of the Backs of the 1900 Stanford University football team from an Uncited photographer

We had a post and a podcast story of some in game stadium disasters that occurred in football history. I was reminded of another one recently that I had planned on doing a story on while reading a great book by John Behee on Fielding Yost of Michigan (More to come on that book soon.)
Behee, while telling the story of Yost, takes us to a very tragic moment in football history during the 1900 season when an overcrowded stadium for a big game between the University of California and Stanford University forced spectators, many of them teenage boys, to climb the roof of a nearby glass works that would give them a bird's eye view of the playing field. 
The rivalry started in 1892, just one year after Stanford began to admit students. The first 13 of these contests were played at the same venue, the Haight Street Grounds, in San Francisco. The 1900 contest would occur on Thursday, November 29, Thanksgiving Day.

This rivalry was entering its tenth meeting on the gridiron according to Stanford Magazine from December 2015 by Sam Scott.

The story of this 1900 edition of the Big Game starts with spectators showing up at the gates at 10:30 AM, pouring out of train cars and local neighborhoods after rain departed earlier in the morning. The ticket prices of $1 each were too steep for many, especially local youngsters. Near one of the endzones of the stadium, there was an adjacent Pacific Glass Works building that sat just across Fifteenth Street from the football grounds. Its over 40 feet of elevation roof provided a spectacular complimentary view for those who could not obtain or afford a ticket to get into the game.

The Glass Works was thriving with work, so much so that they had workers on staff firing up the large glass furnaces to over 3000 degrees inside them, and the outside temps were well above 500 degrees. The furnaces were situated in the large factory in the center of the bay, where the peaked roof, designed for ventilation, was raised about 45 feet above the brick factory floor.

There had been issues in the past where fans, refusing to pay ticket prices, would clamor up the glassworks roof to watch the game for free. The plant's superintendent, James Davis, had been warned of this and was solicited for assistance by Henry Taylor, the treasurer of the Associated Students of Stanford University. Taylor told reporters that the organizers had provided Davis and company six complimentary tickets to the game in exchange for keeping people off the roof. It was more from a gate receipt angle than from a safety concern.

Reports had gone out afterward that suggested that Davis hired security men, sanctioned with keeping the roof clear, and may have used this newfound authority for some ill-gotten gains. They charged people to gain a vantage point of climbing up on the roof to make an additional pocket change—the very thing they were hired to prevent.

The Stanford Magazine story had information from an eyewitness. The article reads, "Herman Guehring, an 11-year-old student at Mission Grammar School, tried scrambling under a fence into the grounds but was chased away. Then he climbed a water tower at 14th and Folsom, but the view was obstructed. And so finally, he joined the swarm pushing into the most obvious vantage point, the glassworks building." 
Guehring, who survived to recant the story to journalist William Briggs (who was Guehring's great nephew) in 1968, said there was, in fact, a watchman there at the glass works, "But it was like trying to turn back the waves at the beach. The kids kept pouring through the fence, anxious to see the kickoff."

There were accounts that the roof had some 400 people on it by the start of the game. Many of them went to the roof's ventilator, positioned at the peak's highest point. It was constructed of thin corrugated iron roofing material and was about 8 feet wide and 72 feet long. It was engineered to support nothing else but its weight and nothing more. Some noted the flimsiness of the vent wisely got off of it to a more stable portion of the factory roof.

30 Nov 1900, Fri The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com

Over across the stadium, the air was electric. The year prior, Cal had handed Stanford a deflating 30-0 shellacking, and the Golden Bears fans in 1900 were reminding their rivals of the previous game by wearing hats that said "30-0" on them. Stanford supporters wore Cardinal team-o'-chanters: "The rich red color of life gleamed from top to bottom of the high bleachers,'' according to an account in the local school newspaper, "The Call." Each school's marching band was trying to drown out the opposition's musical ensemble, and fans from both sides cheered even louder than usual to try and get their voices heard over the musical battles. This was a fierce rivalry; needless to say, the stadium was loud and filled with an enthusiastic crowd. 

Cal's offense had penetrated Cardinal territory some twenty minutes into the game. The intensity was thick with anticipation when a loud crash was heard above the game's noise outside the stadium's Northside. Spectators strained their necks to look towards the commotion but could not gain recognition of what caused it. Someone in the crowd decided it was just a normal noise from the industrial complex across the street, and the fans inside the stadium resumed their focus on the playing field.

As you may have guessed, the noise was the ventilator portion of the roof collapsing. Piece of the steel roof panels along with roof trusses and horrifically people started raining down inside the factory to land on the estimated 500-degree Fahrenheit furnace or the hard brick floor. Glass works employees once tried pulling people off the highly heated furnace top as others raced to turn off the oil supply that was fueling it. 

30 Nov 1900, Fri The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com

Thirteen men and boys were declared dead that day at the scene, ranging in age from 46 years to nine months old. It had to be a horrid scene as charred bodies were strewn across the factory floor while hundreds of injured survivors were groaning in agony. The stench of burnt flesh and clothing filled the air.

30 Nov 1900, Fri The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com

Across the street, the unknowing spectators witnessed a game that was settled in the final minutes by the first successful field goal in the history of the Big Game. At the game’s end, hundreds of Stanford fans surged onto the field, grabbed members of the victors, and paraded them up and down the nearby streets as ambulances were carrying away the wounded and dead from the tragedy of the Glass Works.

It is hard to imagine that people so close in location could be so euphoric and naive to the situation at hand while others are in utter mourning and states of shock at the horrors that unfolded.

Over 100 years later, this Pacific Glass Works catastrophe on Thanksgiving Day 1900 is still the deadliest sporting disaster in American History. A total of 23 died from injuries suffered in the disaster, the last of them some three years later. Of that total, at least 15 would never see their 18th birthday. The first five pages of the San Francisco Examiner morning edition the following day were devoted to this tragedy and its aftermath.

About a week after the event, a jury found no fault with the Glass Works and placed the blame on those who sat on the ventilated roof and who either perished or suffered grave injury from the ensuing collapse.

The picture in the banner above is from Wikimedia Commons of 1886 University of California football team

Special thanks and credit goes to the story of the event from the folloowing sources:

Stanford Magazine from December 2015 by Sam Scott.

John Behee on Fielding Yost of Michigan  

Newspapers.com and their archives of the 1900 San Francisco Examiner.

Background sounds are courtesy of Wikimedia COmmons and some are the brass bands of  th US Air Force and Navy bands. Thank you for your service and your public domain music.