The World's Largest Collegiate Emblem!

The World's Largest Collegiate Emblem!. Western State College of Colorado, Gunnison, Colorado. LIGHTING THE "W": One of the great traditions of the West is repeated each year at WSC's Homecoming, often on July 4th, and on some other special occasions. College students ignite oil-soaked rags which outline the legs of the "W." A beautiful sight loved by students, alumni, residents, and visitors., DESCRIPTION: Western State College's "W" is 420 feet long and 320 feet wide. Each leg is 16 feet thick. Altogether the "W" contains 25,560 square feet, making it the largest such letter in the world and, certainly, the world's largest collegiate emblem., WHITEWASHING THE "W": [F]or many years the whitewash on the "W" was renewed each year by students and faculty passing buckets of lime and water from the fires which melted the snow to the letter. Official "splashers" applied the whitewash to the rocks. Now, tank trucks haul the water to the top of the mountain, and hydrated lime is distributed to the letter through fire hoses., HISTORY: "The W" was the inspiration of Dr. John C. Johnson -- one of the first graduates of the college, later biology professor and chairman of The Division of Natural Science and Mathematics at WSC, and founder of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory at Gothic., On March 30, 1923, Dr. Johnson and four students -- Hugh Dowd, Burtis Adams, Nowell Hamm, and Herbert Axtell -- hiked up the face of Tenderfoot Mountain and laid out the outline of the "W," using bed sheets "borrowed from home." May 2, 1923, was declared a holiday by WSC President Samuel Quigley, and most of the students and faculty climbed the mountain to build the "W.", While the freshmen carried up the ton of lime in 100-pound sacks, upperclassmen and faculty members gathered dead trees from the stand of timber nearby and built several large fires to melt the snow. Together they carried hundreds of heavy flat rocks from the side of the mountain and placed them within the borders of the lines that outlined the "W."