Municipal Grant Park Stadium hosted its first event — an athletic field day for thousands of Chicago police officers — 100 years ago this week.
And though the facility, which wouldn’t be called Soldier Field until 1925, has seen its share of football games, a variety of performers, politicians, pastors, civil right defenders and musicians have also set memorable moments inside the historic venue.
Aug. 16, 1925
About 70,000 people attend the first Chicago Roundup.
Jack Wilson was gored when he leaped directly off his horse onto the long, sharp horn of a steer he was to wrestle.
“Despite his pain he succeeded in throwing the animal before he collapsed at its side,” the Tribune reported.
June 21-23, 1926
Chicago became the first city in the United States to host the International Eucharistic Congress.
Cardinal Mundelein promised Pope Pius XI that if he allowed the event to take place in Chicago, then “a great spiritual banquet” of 1 million communions would open the festivities. In all, 6,000 Masses took place on the event’s first day at the archdiocese’s more than 360 churches, the Tribune reported.
Nearly 1 million Catholics from around the world joined the almost 1 million local Catholics during the four-day gathering. Almost 200,000 people flooded into Soldier Field each day (despite rain and hail the last day) and venerated the consecrated bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist — a triumphant celebration of Catholicism’s central sacrament.
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Closing the event in the village that had been named for him, Mundelein thanked the crowd of Catholics and non-Catholics assembled, “Irrespective of creed or station in life, I believe every one will agree with me that the days of the Eucharistic Congress were a time of much grace and many blessings and that at this time the Lord surely walked again among his people.”
Sept. 22, 1927
A Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney heavyweight prize fight, known as the “Long Count Fight,” becomes the first boxing match to draw $2.5 million at the gate.
From the first bell, both boxers went after each other relentlessly and the fight ebbed and flowed until that pivotal moment in the seventh round. With a left hook to the jaw and a right cross, Dempsey, the challenger, knocked Tunney off his feet for the first time in the champ’s career.
“Dempsey stood before his prostrate foe,” the Tribune wrote in the next morning’s paper, “ready to renew his attack and tear down Fistiana’s time-honored axiom that ‘They don’t come back.’ Referee Dave Barry motioned Dempsey to a neutral corner until Tunney regained his feet.
“It was here the Dempsey party claim the error was made.”
Dempsey was slow to move so Barry waited to start his count. Most ringside reports agreed that Tunney had 13 seconds to clear his head before he arose on Barry’s “nine” count.
“I just couldn’t move,” Dempsey would say later about his delay in getting to the corner. “I wanted him to get up. I wanted to kill the SOB.”
Tunney got to his feet and went on to win the fight and retain the crown by unanimous decision.
Aug. 23, 1930
Unlike most events, the Chicagoland Music Festival didn’t start small and grow. It started big and became huge.
About 150,000 — with thousands more unable to get in the stadium — watched the inaugural show on Aug. 23, 1930. There were so many people, in fact, that spectators sitting on the sidelines impeded the drum corps’ movements.
Aug. 8, 1931
Several hundred performers — including Goliath the sea elephant — arrive to perform as part of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which becomes a fixture of summer in Soldier Field’s parking lot for decades.
Feb. 16, 1936
A 13-story ski jump — the world’s highest man-made jump at the time — is constructed at Soldier Field for the U.S. Central Ski Association’s annual meet. More than 57,000 people show up to see the 1937 meet.
July 21, 1956
The 1956 Grand National 100-mile race, considered the first NASCAR cup series race held in Chicago, was witnessed by 14,402 fans who saw Fireball Roberts win by a car length over Jim Pascal, who was ahead until Roberts passed him on the 194th of 200 laps.
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Stock car racing evokes images of county fairs and Southern racetracks, like the one in Roberts’ hometown that hosts the Daytona 500. But Chicago’s urbanites were passionate devotees of races at Soldier Field, which hosted a number of them during the mid-20th century.
“The thing I’ll never forget is being in the front row on the wall,” Art Fehrman Jr., whose father drove in the race, told Autoweek many years later. “My hands were right on the wall, and I was looking down on the roofs of the cars as they whizzed by.”
July 10, 1966
Two years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was the keynote speaker at the Illinois Rally for Civil Rights at Soldier Field, he returns to the venue to deliver another speech on a sweltering day, telling the 30,000 attendees, “This day we must decide to fill up the jails of Chicago, if necessary, in order to end slums.”
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He outlines 14 basic goals of the Chicago Freedom Movement and later in the day posts them to the LaSalle Street entrance of City Hall.
July 20, 1968
The first Special Olympics is held at Soldier Field.
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A sculpture named “Eternal Flame of Hope” was placed outside the stadium in 2018, to mark the event’s 50th anniversary.
July 8, 1978
The Rolling Stones headline Soldier Field for the first time. The stadium is filled on a steamy summer day with 80,000 fans, with opening acts Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Peter Tosh and Journey, featuring new vocalist Steve Perry.
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The Stones set list includes most of the songs on the quintet’s latest release, “Some Girls.” Later that night Mick Jagger drops in on a Lefty Dizz set at Kingston Mines. The band also jams with Muddy Waters while in town.
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