War Memorial Stadium

Address:
222 N. 22nd Street Laramie, Wyoming 82070

Directions

Wyoming playing Aggies - 1910

The current stadium, War Memorial, was built in 1960, and replaced Corbett Field. Commonly referred to as “The War,” it is at the highest elevation of any NCAA Division 1 football stadium.

Jonah Field at War Memorial Stadium is an outdoor football stadium on the campus of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. It is the home field of the Wyoming Cowboys of the Mountain West Conference. It is the highest Division I FBS college football stadium in the nation; the playing field sits at a lofty elevation of 7,215 feet (2,199 m) above sea level.

History

Along with the War Memorial Fieldhouse, War Memorial Stadium was built 68 years ago in the spring and summer of 1950. The stadium replaced Corbett Field, a small field opened in 1922 and located southeast of Half Acre Gym on land now used by the Business School and the student union parking lot.

It originally sat 20,000 in grandstands on the east and west sides of the field. In 1970, the western upper deck, containing 5,500 seats and a new press box, was added and in 1978 the eastern press box and northern bleachers were added, bringing capacity up to 33,500. The playing field runs mostly in the traditional north-south configuration; it is slightly skewed to the northeast and southwest about 10°.

Below the new north end zone scoreboard is a 5 ft 2 in (1.6 m) statue Cowboy Tough by Chris Navarro. Fanning a Twister, located to the north of the stadium at the main entrance to the athletic complex, is modeled after a photo of Guy Holt riding Steamboat, the 1909 winner of “Worst Horse” at Frontier Park in Cheyenne.  In the 1920s, an equipment manager named Deane Hunton found the picture. Thinking it embodied the spirit of the athletics program and the cowboy life, he stenciled an outline of the photograph, which became the iconic logo of the university (also found on Wyoming license plates since 1936 and many other places around the state).

Go Pokes!

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