September in Bozeman marks a return of Bobcat Football to the campus of Montana State University. Game day at Bobcat Stadium, on the south side of Kagy Avenue, draws tens of thousands of students, alumni and community members. MSU is lucky to have sufficient on-campus space for such a large social gathering. Bobcat Stadium is, in fact, the third location of a gridiron field on the MSU campus.

The first permanent football field was established on campus following World War I. Located in the flat area to the north of Montana Hall and just east of what would become South 11th Avenue, MSC’s Gatton Field was partially encircled with wooden bleachers of seven to twelve risers in height. Spectators often parked Ford Model A’s and Model T’s around the playing surface to enclose the field, which provided additional fan seating and night-time lighting should the contest go late.

A May 28, 1920 article in the [Montana State College] MSC student newspaper, The Exponent, explains the class of 1917’s petition to name the new football field in honor of former MSC student Cyrus “Cy” Gatton. An outstanding athlete, Gatton entered MSC in the fall of 1913 following graduation from Gallatin County High School. At 147 pounds, Gatton played fullback and missed only one game during his four year football career at MSC. He also captained the track and baseball teams and lettered in basketball.

Gatton left MSC and Bozeman in the fall of 1916 to complete his degree at the University of Wisconsin. After volunteering for the Army when the United States entered the Great War in April 1917, he trained with the air corps. Shot down over Europe on his 26th combat mission, Gatton died just one week before the Armistice of November 11, 1918.

Construction of Romney gym on the south side of the MSC campus prompted relocation of the football field. An April 9, 1929 Exponent headline read “Work on New Gatton Field to Start this Spring,” before further stating “Another step in Montana State’s long struggle to secure a modern athletic field is about to be taken. Work will commence on a football field and track south of the gymnasium as soon as the weather permits. It will involve an expenditure of about $,7,000.”

Construction of the playing field required the removal of 10,500 cubic yards of dirt, reported to be “mostly gumbo.” The Exponent revealed the Athletic Department’s funding woes by reporting this dirt work to be “just the preliminary step to provide an adequate athletic field for Montana State. The plans include besides the track and field, tennis courts and baseball diamonds between the gym and the heating plant, and a grandstand on the north side of the field with bleachers on the south. At present, however, there is no money for that purpose and all the work that can be done this year is the grading of the ground.”

A month later The Exponent reported the progress of The Standard Construction Company, which held the construction contract. In two weeks the field had been leveled and water pipes laid, with grass seed to go down shortly to build sod in time for the 1931 football season. The grounds would be enclosed with a seven foot high fence and the eastern portion of the field devoted to a baseball diamond.

The final football game on old Gatton Field saw MSC beat North Dakota State in late fall of 1929. Workmen dismantled and moved bleachers to the new Gatton Field, placing them on the north and south sides of the field along the sidelines. Butte’s The Montana Standard reported that the player’s entrance would be just a few steps from the locker-room facilities in Romney Gym and seating capacity of the new stadium to be about 4,000. Professor F. M. Harrington was credited with preparing the grass playing surface a year sooner than expected, thus enabling the early move.
Football at the second Gatton Field began on September 20, 1930 with the Bobcats winning a pre-season game against Centerville, an Independent team of the Butte league, in a final score of 38-0. Over the next 40 years of collegiate football on Gatton Field, a handful of extraordinary stories stand out. Of the more poignant is the fate of 13 players on the 1940 and 1941 squads, killed in service during World War II, which prompted prominent sportscaster Bill Sterns to name these MSC athletes his “All-America Team of 1944.” The loss of these players is the background story in Ivan Doig’s “The Eleventh Man.”

In 1963 MSC, soon to be MSU, became a charter member of the Big Sky Conference, in which it still plays. MSU dominated Big Sky Conference titles through the 1960’s, despite the glaring inequality in practice and playing facilities between basketball and football. Basketball enjoyed the state-of-the-art Field House with a capacity of 8,000, completed in 1957 to the south and west of Gatton Field, while football played for conference titles in front of a maximum 6,000 fans in field increasingly hemmed in by the construction of Roskie, North Hedges and South Hedges dormitories, and Gaines Hall.

Plans were created in the late 1960’s for a new bowl-like stadium south of the field house. The new stadium was designed to seat 16,000, and could be expanded to 30,000 with the addition of two upper decks. The ambitious plan depended upon student support through fees, which students narrowly voted down in December 1968.

After extensive give and take, students finally approved construction of a new stadium in 1970, though they withheld funding and the construction program had to be significantly reduced. Football moved to Reno H. Sales stadium, now called Bobcat Stadium, in time for the 1974 season. Dismantlement of Gatton Field began the same year, to provide space for the M. Hosaeus P.E. Center, which was recently remodeled.

The original gate, and monuments to Cy Gatton and MSU servicemen, are the only remaining physical indicators of the location of MSU’s second Gatton Field.

Courtney Kramer is a proud graduate of MSU’s History Department and serves as the City of Bozeman’s Historic Preservation Officer. She may be contacted at the City Planning Office, 406-582-2260 or via email at ckramer@bozeman.net. More information about Bozeman’s historic districts is available at www.preservebozeman.org