This Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 17th at 7:00 pm, we go back to Can­non Green to re-light a fire that has been dor­mant for six years, the BONFIRE!

Time­frame unknown

The bon­fire is one of the old­est tra­di­tions at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. The Prince­to­ni­ana Com­mit­tee, part of the Alumni Asso­ci­a­tion, describes the fire as “one of the most mem­o­rable– and spo­radic– of all tra­di­tional Prince­ton activ­i­ties.” The cel­e­bra­tory fire occurs only after the Prince­ton foot­ball team has defeated both Yale and Har­vard.

“Accord­ing to tradition, the con­struc­tion of the Bon­fire rested with the Dink Wear­ing Fresh­men. It was their respon­si­bil­ity to gather wood from the sur­round­ing area, often aided in large part by towns­peo­ple and cam­pus con­struc­tion work­ers. Once a tall pyre had been placed in the cen­ter of Can­non Green, the final adorn­ments usu­ally included an out­house and an effigy of John Har­vard or a Yale Bull­dog, or both.” — Prince­to­ni­ana Committee

Here we show­case just a few of the many his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs of bon­fires that are in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives, housed here at the Mudd Man­u­script Library. The fol­low­ing reside in the His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion: Cam­pus Life (AC112)  and the Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Records (AC168).

Rem­nants of the 1897 bonfire

Gath­er­ing the mate­ri­als for the 1901 fire.

A large pyre for the 1914 fire

From 1948: the out­house is shown with Yale Bowl painted on the side

Foot­ball coach Char­lie Cald­well ’25 and team cap­tain George Chan­dler ’51 light­ing the bon­fire in 1950.

Stu­dents watch the 1985 fire from the trees.

The Prince­ton Tiger lights the 1994 bonfire.

The most recent fire in 2006. Photo cour­tesy: John Jame­son, Office of Communications

Prince­ton Pause also com­piled a video from the 2006 fire fea­tur­ing items from our archives.

More pho­tographs can be viewed in per­son by vis­it­ing the Mudd Read­ing Room. Dig­i­tal copies of pho­tos are also avail­able. Start your search with our His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Database. 

If you are attend­ing and shar­ing pho­tos using Twit­ter or Insta­gram, please use the hash­tag #bon­firePU and con­tribute to doc­u­ment­ing the his­tory of this won­der­ful event!

Please also feel free to leave a com­ment about your bon­fire memories!