Bonfire Memorial - Twelve Portals Facing Home

A stop on Texas A&M Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Please approach this place quietly. For nearly 90 years, Aggies built a towering Bonfire each fall before the football game against the University of Texas. At about 2:42 a.m. on November 18, 1999, the 59-foot stack of some 5,000 logs collapsed while students were building it here on the polo fields. Of the 58 students and former students working on the stack, 12 were killed and 27 were injured.

The memorial was dedicated on November 18, 2004, five years to the day after the collapse, and was designed by the San Antonio firm Overland Partners. You enter through Tradition Plaza and follow the History Walk, 89 stones for the earlier Bonfires, with a gap for 1963, when the fire was not lit after President Kennedy was assassinated. The Spirit Ring encircles the site of the stack. Each of its twelve portals holds a bronze likeness of one of the Aggies who died and faces toward that person's hometown, and stones with bronze inlays link the portals in honor of the 27 injured.

Visitors often step into a portal and stand a moment in silence.

Getting here: From Cushing, head northeast for about 10 to 12 minutes to the open polo fields, where the ring of tall stone portals stands on the grass.

Did you know?: When the lawns of the Memorial Student Center were replaced in 2012, a piece of the old grass was brought here so it would remain part of the campus.

Photo op: From the History Walk, photograph the full ring of portals, keeping a respectful distance from anyone paying their respects.

More on Wikipedia: Aggie Bonfire · Texas A&M University

Bonfire Memorial - Twelve Portals Facing Home

Stops on this tour