On the 29th of November, 1900, huge crowds gathered at Recreation Park Stadium in San
Francisco.
They were there to watch the Big Game – an annual college football match between the
California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal.
As well as packing out the stadium, hundreds of spectators gathered on the roof of a nearby
building which overlooked the grounds.
Though they did not know it, they were moments away from the worst sporting disaster in American
history.
The Big Game has a history which stretches all the way back to 1892.
Indeed, it’s the oldest ongoing football rivalry in the United States.
The inaugural game was organised, in part, by Herbert Hoover - a man who would go on
to become US President, but who at the time was the undergraduate manager of the football
and baseball teams at Stanford.
10,000 tickets were printed for that first game.
Twice that number of spectators showed up.
Hoover and his fellow organisers were overwhelmed, and later recalled cash spilling onto the
ground because they could not stow it away fast enough… and also having to source a
ball at the very last moment, as nobody had thought to bring one.
The popularity of the event was a sign to the Hoover and the other organisers that they
were onto something worth continuing.
The Big Game quickly became an annual fixture… and the rivalry only became more fierce when
a prize was offered in 1898.
California, having never won until that point, took home two successive games, and was rewarded
with a life-sized bronzed statue of two footballers by a renowned sculptor.
It’s a statue which remains on the Berkeley University campus to this day.
By 1900, the game was a beloved fixture in the calendar.
The match that year would take place on Thanksgiving Day itself, the 29th of November, at Recreation
Park Stadium.
Tickets were sold for one dollar apiece – the equivalent of about $31 in 2020 money.
And they went fast: by the start of the game the stands were packed.
The lack of spectator space was no deterrent to people who wished to watch the game.
Recreation Park was in an industrial area, surrounded by tall buildings, some of which
overlooked the stadium.
One of these – the San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works – offered a particularly good
view to anyone who didn’t want to or couldn’t afford to pay the price of admission.
Spectators, many of them children, swarmed up onto the roof of the factory.
It was a peaked roof, topped with a wide corrugated iron vent that ran the length of the building.
The best view of the field could be had from atop this vent, and so it was here that many
of the approximately 400 people on the roof gathered.
The corrugated iron roof of the vent was held up by wooden supports.
It was designed only to support its own weight, and many of those who found a perch on it
were wary of its flimsiness.
One survivor later recalled: “I don't know how many hundred people were
up there, but there wasn't an inch of standing room to spare.”
Another reported that: “All of us were laughing and jesting.
Some of the fellows said: ‘If this thing breaks, we'll all go down together.’”
The factory was not yet fully operational – only one furnace had been stoked to its
operating temperature of 1700 degree Celsius (or 3000 degrees Fahrenheit).
A skeleton crew were present, including a watchman who had been offered six free tickets
to the game in exchange for keeping children off the roof of the factory.
However, despite the best efforts of the workers, it was impossible to chase away the huge crowd
of spectators that arrived and occupied the roof.
Excited children dug under factory fences.
Older boys and men climbed over.
When the watchman threatened them with a metal pipe and told them to leave, they simply dodged
around him and clambered up to the roof.
Concerned, workers called the police.
They were told to take the matter up with the officer in charge at the stadium.
When they attempted to do so, they were barred from entering, as they did not have tickets
and the venue was filled to capacity.
Twenty minutes into the match, disaster struck.
The hugely overloaded ventilator on top of the glassworks gave way, spilling around 100
people down into the interior of the building.
It was a considerable fall of around five storeys, and in many cases, injuries were
exacerbated by the fact that the victims fell directly onto the operational furnace.
The outer surface of the furnace was hot enough to cause severe burns.
Additionally, the impact of falling spectators severed fuel lines, causing hot oil to spray
out and inflict further injury.
The heat of the furnace also made it difficult to retrieve injured parties from the area,
as did a metal cage which surrounded the furnace, entangling and trapping the injured.
Factory workers were the first to respond to the disaster.
They shut off the furnace and used whatever tools were available to them to pull or push
injured spectators away from the scalding heat of the furnace.
The emergency services were summoned, but their resources were quickly overwhelmed by
the scale of the disaster.
One fireman remarked: “The sight was awful.
We knew not which way to turn or what to do.”
There were not enough ambulances to accommodate the injured, and so many were transported
in private automobiles, or in hand or horse drawn wagons.
Within the stadium itself, play stopped only briefly when the roof first gave way.
Those inside the stadium could hear some commotion from the direction of the factory, but could
not clearly see what had happened.
After a momentary pause, the crowd began to chant, “It’s a job,” indicating that
they believed the disturbance was an attempt by opposing spectators to distract from the
game.
Play swiftly resumed.
As bodies were removed from the factory, Stanford was declared the winner thanks to a last minute
field goal.
A joyful parade through the city began, with celebrations somewhat muted but not altogether
called off as news of the disaster was circulated.
Anxious relatives gathered outside hospitals to try and find their loved ones.
Many of the injured were children and young men, with the youngest victim to lose his
life being just nine years old.
Young people had made up the majority of those on the roof, as they were the demographic
least likely to have enough money to buy a ticket, and least likely to be put off by
having to climb up onto a roof.
In total, 23 people lost their lives in the disaster – some of them passing away instantly
as a result of the fall, and some passing away in hospital in the days which followed.
One victim who was severely injured survived for three years and endured multiple surgeries
and amputations before ultimately losing his life.
More than a hundred people sustained injuries in the collapse, and the accident made headlines
across the country.
At the same time, however, accounts of the game itself were also given equal weight by
many newspapers.
Both the Stanford and California student newspapers covered the game in great detail, but made
no mention of the disaster which overshadowed it.
A Grand Jury was convened to investigate the causes behind the disaster.
Though both the police and the factory workers were criticised, it was very quickly decided
that the victims themselves had been responsible for the disaster, with a report stating, “The
deceased had no business being there.
No one can be held responsible for their deaths other than themselves.”
Because the surviving victims were deemed to have contributed to their own injury, under
the law at the time they were not entitled to any compensation, however severely wounded
they might have been.
The Big Game continued to be held on an annual basis, with universities taking turns to host.
It remained popular throughout the years, and a number of traditions grew up around
it, including a celebratory bonfire.
Even now, huge crowds flock to each annual game, and the history of dramatic wins and
losses is well-documented by both institutions.
The disaster was, by a considerable margin, the worst sporting disaster to take place
in the US in recorded history, and it remains so to this day.
Although its impact on the lives of those involved was enormous, the story of the disaster
itself is largely forgotten.
Memories of the Big Game in 1900 tend to outweigh those of the Big Game Disaster.