Name-a-Day Calendar, June 16: Oregon State Beavers
Page 222 of 365
Chosen in: 1916
Chosen by: Probably The Oregonian sports editor L.H. Gregory
Corvallis College was established in 1868 and became known as Corvallis State Agricultural College in 1872. As with most agricultural schools, this school’s first athletic nickname was the Aggies, adopted when they started playing football and baseball in the mid-1890s. Some people also called these teams the Orangemen, as the school’s official color had just switched from navy blue to orange in 1893.
Oregon has been culturally associated with the beaver since the early days of the Oregon Trail (c. 1820). The western portion of the state’s abundance of forested streams made for a perfect environment where the beavers could thrive in their dam-building ways. Then they were overhunted and overtrapped and now there aren’t nearly as many beavers in Oregon. And so it goes.
In any case, the fur of the beaver is a close-enough color to orange that the comparison seemed apt on account of state history. In the mid-1910s, with the school now known as the Oregon Agricultural College, The Oregonian sports editor L.H. Gregory began to call their teams the Beavers for this reason, and it stuck. In 1916, the school made it official and changed the title of their yearbook to The Beaver.
The school was renamed Oregon State College in 1937, at which point we first got the “Oregon State Beavers”. University status followed in 1961.
Oregon State has seen several mascots, official and unofficial, throughout the years, from coyotes to bulldogs to an actual human, before landing on their current Benny the Beaver.
Previous page: Oregon Ducks
Next page: Pacific Tigers
Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!