Name-a-Day Calendar, April 26: Minnesota Golden Gophers

Page 171 of 365

Chosen in: 1857 (“Golden” added in the 1930s)

Chosen by: Cartoonist Robert O. Sweeny, kinda (“Golden” added by football radio broadcaster Halsey Hall)

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Here’s a fun fact about my alma mater: the University of Minnesota was founded (1851) before Minnesota gained statehood (1858). The “Gopher” nickname comes from the period between those two years.

This was just before the railroad industry completely exploded. Railroad corporations were still trying to curry favor with legislators nationwide to allow them to build through their land, including in what was then the Minnesota Territory. In 1857, the legislature introduced a bill that was to subsidize a loan of $5 million¹ to these corporations for this very purpose.

This bill was widely opposed by regular ol’ citizens, but the overwhelming belief was that it would pass the legislature because they were too deep in the pockets of Big Railroad. Among the opposition was cartoonist Robert Ormsby Sweeny, a Quaker from Philadelphia who settled in Saint Paul. Sweeny detailed his ire for this bill in a rather elaborate political cartoon, in which…well, it’s in the public domain. See for yourself.

The nine hunching humans in the “mine of corruption” at the bottom are the legislators, weighed down at the neck by the bribes they allegedly took. The nine gophers² at the front are meant to symbolize the bill’s supporters, thus the train being labeled the Gopher Train.

The gophers got their way, as the bill passed, but this cartoon made an impression on the residents of the soon-to-be state. It gradually led to Minnesota being unofficially called The Gopher State and, in turn, the University of Minnesota’s sports teams being called the Gophers. This was not an immediate impact—the teams were not widely known as the Gophers until the mid-1920s—but it was a lasting one, as the nickname has held firm for a century.

“Golden” would enter the fray in the 1930s, when Minnesota’s football team often wore all-gold uniforms. The team’s primary radio broadcaster, the legendary Halsey Hall, dubbed them the Golden Gophers and it stuck.

And that all leads to this. In 1952 came the birth of a legend: Goldy Gopher, the best mascot in sports.

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1. $173.5 million in 2023 dollars

2. They’re actually thirteen-lined ground squirrels but Sweeny called them gophers so that’s what people latched onto. To this day, pretty much every depiction of the Minnesota gopher is technically a thirteen-lined ground squirrel, including the mascot and all of the logos.