Beaver Stadium, now promoted by Penn State as West Shore Home Field at Beaver Stadium, stands on the eastern side of the University Park campus in State College, Pennsylvania. It is the home of the Nittany Lions, but a visit is also a way to see how a university’s football traditions become part of a region’s identity. On a home Saturday, thousands of fans converge on campus and the surrounding Happy Valley community. This is not a conventional attraction with daily walk-in admission: access to the stands is tied to a game or another scheduled event, while stadium tours have to be arranged through Penn State’s All-Sports Museum.
The current stadium opened in 1960 after an unusual relocation. Penn State dismantled New Beaver Field, which had stood on the west side of campus, into hundreds of pieces and rebuilt it about a mile and a half to the east beneath a new superstructure. The horseshoe-shaped ground opened with 46,284 seats. Earlier football grounds had carried the Beaver name too, honoring James A. Beaver, a Pennsylvania lawyer and Civil War general who later served as governor, university trustee-board president and acting Penn State president. The name is therefore connected to the institution’s history, not simply to a nearby natural feature.
