Bonfire Memorial - College Station, TX
Posted by: 
WalksfarTX
N 30° 36.698 W 096° 20.270
14R E 755215 N 3389583
Spirit of the Bonfire is located in Spence Park on the A&M Campus.
Waymark Code: WMY5TW
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 04/27/2018
Views: 0
The Memorial consists of three separate bronze statues on cement platforms depicting different elements of the tradition. “Chop” is portrayed with a bronze tree stump and ax next to it. The five-tiered Bonfire design with an outhouse as the topper represents “stack.” The last sculpture looks like flames erupting from the Bonfire stack, illustrating Aggies’ “burning desire to beat the University of Texas.”
Wikipedia
The Aggie Bonfire was a long-standing annual tradition at Texas A&M University as part of the college rivalry with the University of Texas at Austin. For 90 years, Texas A&M students—known as Aggies—built and burned a bonfire on campus each autumn. Known to the Aggie community simply as "Bonfire", the annual autumn event symbolized Aggie students' "burning desire to beat the hell outta t.u.", a derogatory nickname for the University of Texas. The bonfire was traditionally lit around Thanksgiving in conjunction with festivities surrounding the annual college football game.
Although early bonfires were little more than piles of trash, as time passed the annual event became more organized. Over the years the bonfire grew to an immense size, setting the world record in 1969.
In 1999, the Bonfire collapsed during construction, killing twelve people, eleven students and one former student, and injuring twenty-seven others. The accident led Texas A&M to declare a hiatus on an official Bonfire. However, since 2002, a student-sponsored coalition has constructed an annual unsanctioned, off-campus "Student Bonfire" in the spirit of its predecessor.