One hundred twenty-six years ago, college football and the glass industry collided in the deadliest sporting disaster in United States history.
Nearly 19,000 fans packed Recreation Park on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, 1900, in San Francisco’s Mission District to watch the 10th meeting between Stanford and the University of California, the largest crowd to witness a sports game west of the Mississippi. The old stadium was nestled in an industrial area home to the newly constructed San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works plant, which stood across the street from the stadium, on its north side, providing an unobstructed view of the field.
That view was what drew hundreds of men, young and old, unwilling to pay or unable to pay for the game’s $1 ticket. The opportunistic fans easily scaled the plant’s eight-foot fence, clambering up to the metal roof via the building’s beams and braces, according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle published on Nov. 30, 1900. Despite the management’s efforts to keep them out and warnings that the roof was unsafe, the crowd ignored the danger, and before long, the roof was packed with spectators.
Sam Scott, a senior writer at Stanford magazine, wrote that an estimated 400 spectators filled the rooftop that day.
“Twenty minutes after kickoff, the crowd was tense as Cal made its first foray deep into Stanford territory,” wrote Scott. “Then a crash from the field’s north side brought play to a halt. The roof of the glassworks had collapsed like a gallows’ trap. Necks craned. Players stood out. No one could see exactly what had happened. Then, by one account, a Berkeley fan, fearing a Stanford diversion, yelled, ‘It’s a job,’ and all eyes returned to the ball. The game continued as if nothing had happened, the bands and cheers overwhelming the screams next door.”
A Roof Gives Way
Unbeknownst to the crowd in the stands, the flimsy roof of the San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works collapsed, triggered by the added weight. The load of the fans caused the factory’s structural beams to buckle, sending roughly a 100 spectators tumbling down onto girders, the top of a blazing, 30-foot by 60-foot glass furnace and a concrete floor below.
Scott noted that the first people to grasp the enormity of the situation were nearly victims themselves.
“Charles Yotz, an oven man at the factory, had been raking the fire when bodies began raining down, narrowly missing him,” he wrote. “He tried to remove those who had fallen on top of the furnace with a giant poker while his partner, Clarence Jeter, ran to turn off the oil feeding the blaze inside. Officials later estimated the surface temperature of the furnace at 500 degrees.”
San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works’ furnace covered nearly one-half of the plant floor. It was constructed of rock and firebrick, “bound and held together by a network of posts, bands and rods of iron,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. The furnace took more than a month to heat to the required temperature to melt glass, and its cauldrons held 15 tons of molten glass.
“The outer firebricks of this seething inferno were so hot that a man’s boots would be consumed in the time it would take him to run across the surface, and the iron binding rods were of a corresponding temperature,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. “Upon this fiery furnace fell nearly one-half of the men precipitated through the roof.
“In a flash, their clothing caught fire and with the screams and groans of the unfortunate victims came the odor of burning flesh and cloth. In their death agony, some of the helpless victims struggled, rolled or crawled from the furnace, while others, unable to assist themselves, were removed by the willing aid of those who quickly arrived on the scene of the disaster.”
A Game Goes On
The incident occurred just 20 minutes after kickoff. Twenty-two people would die in the immediate aftermath, and more than 100 others would suffer burns and other injuries in the fall. The eventual death toll reached 23.
Despite the tragedy, the football game continued.