Looking at the history of Husky Stadium, from its first game in 1920 until renovation begins in Nov. 2011.
Created by seattletimes on Oct 16, 2011
Last updated: 08/17/12 at 06:29 PM
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Jake Locker, who didn’t play in the Huskies’ previous game at Oregon because of a broken rib, is back in the lineup for his final game at Husky Stadium. The Huskies beat UCLA 24-7, the first of three straight wins that earn a trip to the Holiday Bowl, where they beat Nebraska. (Photo by Dean Rutz / The Seattle Times)
Huskies, coming off an 0-12 season, stun No. 3-ranked USC, 16-13, when Erik Folk makes a field goal with three seconds to play. Steve Sarkisian, in his first season with the Huskies, beats his former boss, Pete Carroll, who is in his final year with the Trojans. See the front page of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game.
“Go Huskies” and the “W” logo are painted on the north and south decks.
Jake Locker leads UW to a 24-10 victory over No. 22 Boise State in his first game at Husky Stadium. Locker passes for 193 yards and a touchdown and runs for 84 and another score. Left, Locker drags defender Kyle Gingg (44) into the end zone to give the Huskies a touchdown on their first possession. (Photo by Mark Harrison / The Seattle Times)
Cody Pickett, left, throws for a school-record 455 yards in a 31-28 win over Arizona. Pickett has seven of the top nine passing yardage games in UW history. (Photo by Jim Bates / The Seattle Times)
Curtis Williams is honored during the Huskies’ victory over Arizona, a week after he suffered a spinal cord injury at Stanford that left him paralyzed. Williams died 18 months later. Left, Cody Pickett and Marques Tuiasosopo stand with other teammates to honor Williams. (Photo by Elaine Thompson / AP) Read Steve Kelley's column about "C-Dub."
Coach Rick Neuheisel’s Huskies beat Miami 34-29, one of seven victories by a touchdown or less in a 10-1 regular season. The Huskies finished No. 3 in the final poll after beating Purdue in the Rose Bowl. Left, the cover of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game. See the full page.
Marques Tuiasosopo passes for 302 yards and runs for 207 in a 35-30 victory over Stanford. Left, Tuiasosopo celebrates with teammates after scoring the go-ahead TD in the fourth quarter. (Photo by Mark Harrison / The Seattle Times) See the cover of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game.
Washington star Corey Dillon runs for 222 yards in the first quarter during a rout of San Jose State. Dillon, and many of the other UW starters, watched the last three quarters from the bench. Left, Dillon celebrates scoring one of his four touchdowns. (Photo by Tom Reese / The Seattle Times) See The Seattle Times' Sports cover from the game.
Napoleon Kaufman becomes the Huskies’ all-time leading rusher in UW’s 25-16 victory over No. 16 Ohio State.
The Seahawks play two exhibition games and three regular-season games at Husky Stadium because the Kingdome was being repaired after tiles fell from the ceiling.
The Huskies beat Nebraska 29-14 in a rare night game. ESPN sideline crews measure the crowd noise at 130 decibels (pain begins at 125), highest ever for a college football game.
Huskies cruise to a 56-21 victory over Washington State, wrapping up an 11-0 regular season. After beating Michigan easily in the Rose Bowl, the Huskies shared the national title with Miami. Left, part of the cover of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game. See the full page.
The Huskies swarm fifth-ranked USC, 31-0, on a day UW celebrated 100 years of football. "I saw purple. That's all I saw," USC quarterback Todd Marinovich says after the game. "No numbers, no faces, just purple." Left, the cover of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game. See the full page.
Former president Ronald Reagan opens Ted Turner’s Goodwill Games with a short speech to a packed stadium on a sweltering evening. Husky Stadium was the site of the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the track and field competition, where 33 field records were set. (Photo by Harley Soltes / The Seattle Times)
Wooden bleachers in the north upper deck are replaced with aluminum seating. The same process was repeated for the south upper deck in 1992.
West stands are replaced, at a cost of $3.7 million.
A crowd of 73,676 watches the Huskies beat Stanford, 31-21. Left, fans inagurate the north addition to Husky Stadium amid celebratory balloons. (Photo by Harley Soltes / The Seattle Times)
The new north upper deck collapses during construction. No one was hurt and workers started over, finishing the job just in time for the 1987 home opener. The expansion added 13,700 seats, bringing the capacity to 72,500 and also featured the glass-enclosed reception area, known now as the Don James Center. Left, sightseers and students view the wreckage from a nearby hillside. (Photo by Jimi Lott / The Seattle Times) See the front cover of The Seattle Times covering the collapse.
Steve Pelluer leads Huskies to 25-24 victory over Michigan with a touchdown pass and two-point conversion with 34 seconds to play. Left, Pelluer unloads the pass that produced the two-point conversion. (Photo by Harley Soltes / The Seattle Times) See more of The Seattle Times' Sports section's coverage.
Delirious UW fans tear down the goal posts after a 17-13 victory over Arizona State – in a game played in Tempe. Fans watched the victory on closed-circuit TV at Husky Stadium and celebrated a win they thought wrapped up a second straight spot in the Rose Bowl. A week later, Washington State ruined those plans with an upset of the Huskies in Pullman. Left, The Seattle Times' Sports cover from the game. See the full page.
The Wave wasn’t invented at Husky Stadium but might have been popularized there during the Huskies’ 42-31 victory over Stanford. (Photo by Natalie Fobes / The Seattle Times)
The Huskies score a 28-10 win over USC on the way to their first Rose Bowl under coach Don James. Left, Warren Moon, the Huskies' quarterback, landed in the end zone with a head-first leap to score Washington's first touchdown. See the rest of the front cover of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game. (Photo by Vic Condiotty / The Seattle Times)
Washington State led the Huskies 27-14 with 3:01 to play when the Cougars pass up a field-goal try on fourth and one. Al Burleson intercepts a pass and returns it 93 yards for a touchdown, then Warren Moon hits Spider Gaines on a 78-yard TD pass for a wild 28-27 win. Left, an article from The Seattle Times from the game. See more coverage of the game.
UW media guide refers to the stadium as “Husky Stadium” for the first time. Until then, it had been called University of Washington Stadium.
A group (including Hugh McElhenny) trying to bring pro football to Seattle promotes an NFL exhibition game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Jets, matching future Hall-of-Fame quarterbacks Terry Bradshaw and Joe Namath. McElhenny’s group, which would have called the team the Kings, was later aced out by the Nordstrom-backed contingent that eventually landed the Seahawks. Left, the front page of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game. See the full page.
Washington junior Cary Feldmann, left, wins the javelin at the NCAA track and field championships. Oregon superstar Steve Prefontaine wins the three-mile easily, then criticizes the condition of the track, adding, “I got out of this nothing more than just a good, hard workout. The victory rates way down on the list in my book.” See a page from The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the meet. (Photo sequence by Larry Dion / The Seattle Times)
Stadium is expanded from 55,000 to more than 59,000 when 3,000 seats are added to the north rim and portable bleachers are placed behind the east end zone. The Huskies also install AstroTurf and an all-weather track. At the time, only the Astrodome and the stadiums at Indiana State and Tennessee had artificial turf. The Huskies stocked more than 200 pairs of shoes for opponents to use. The surface was replaced in 1972, 1977, 1987, 1995, 2000 (FieldTurf, paid for by Seahawks) and in 2009.
Plans to add 20,000 seats are scrapped when the lowest construction bid comes in nearly $2 million more than the estimated cost of $3.6 million.
The Jim Owens-coached Huskies beat the Cougars 20-0 in the Apple Cup, completing a 9-1 regular season. The Huskies then routed Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. Left, the front page of The Seattle Times' Sports section covering the game. See the full page.
Washington’s Credell Green runs for 258 yards – still a stadium record – in a 27-7 Apple Cup victory.
In an NFL exhibition game, former Huskies quarterback Don Heinrich leads the New York Giants to a 28-17 victory over San Francisco. McElhenny, the former UW star who played for the 49ers, was injured and watched the game in street clothes from the sideline.
USC wins the NCAA track and field championships. Washington’s top finisher is George Widenfeldt, who tied for second in the high jump, clearing 6-6.
In the season opener, UW beats Kansas State 33-7 but only 30,245 attend, with some fans saying they are afraid the upper deck will collapse. Hugh McElhenny ran for 177 yards, including a 91-yard TD. It was also the first Band Day. Left, the front cover of The Seattle Times featuring the game. See the full page.
The playing field, which had been dirt, is replaced with grass.
The first stadium expansion increases seating capacity to 40,000.
Charles Lindbergh, who had made the first solo, nonstop crossing of the Atlantic four months earlier, buzzes over the stadium in his Spirit of St. Louis, lands at the Sand Point Naval Station, then speaks to more than 25,000 fans at the stadium. Left, Lindbergh perches on the back of a car inside the stadium. (Seattle Times file photo) See The Seattle Times' full page of photos from Lindbergh's visit .
Huskies star George Wilson leads UW to a 13-0 victory over Stanford and Hall of Famer Ernie Nevers. In a slightly less competitive game, the Huskies had opened the season at home that year with a 108-0 victory over Willamette. The Huskies were 10-0-1 during the regular season, tying Nebraska, before losing to Alabama, 20-19, in the Rose Bowl. One of the Huskies’ stars was Herman Brix, a tackle from Tacoma, who won a silver medal in the shot put at the 1928 Olympics, then appeared as Tarzan in movies. Read an essay on George Wilson from our local news partner HistoryLink.org.
Washington shut out USC, 22-0, and 30,000 fans turned out for the game. Left, The Seattle Times' Sports cover from the game. See the entire page.
Warren G. Harding, who had just become the first president to visit Alaska, makes his final speech in front of a crowd of 25,000. He died six days later in San Francisco. The stadium often hosted speeches, Fourth of July concerts, dances and other special events during the early years.
The first Washington vs. Washington State dual track meet is held, on the stadium’s four-lane cinder track.
UW plays its first football game at the 30,000-seat stadium that was finished 12 hours before kickoff at a cost of less than $600,000. The name contest committee had considered Washington Cascadium, Crater, Magnet and Cirque before settling on Washington Field. Bob Abel, the UW quarterback and student body president (talk about a Big Man on Campus!) scores the first touchdown on a 63-yard return of a blocked field-goal attempt but the Sun Dodgers lose to Dartmouth, 28-7. Left, The Seattle Times' Sports coverage of the opening of the stadium. See more from the coverage.
Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company signs a contract with the University of Washington to build a football stadium, to be finished by Nov. 27 for the game against Dartmouth. A student fund drive, with plaques sold for $50 and $100, raised money to get the project started.
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