Pop Hill Ski Jump

Pop Hill Ski Jump

Pop Hill Ski Jump Jeff M. Sauve As the son of the chemistry department chair, Peter Agre spent many hours as a child in the 1950s playing on the St. Olaf College campus, including at the Pop Hill ski jump. Years later, Agre recounted those experiences: “In summer, we...
Pop Hill Caves

Pop Hill Caves

Pop Hill Caves Jeff M. Sauve The “devil at your doorstep” was how the St. Olaf College administration viewed a small brewery and beer garden once located directly behind Thorson Hall. In 1885, Adolph Grafmueller purchased the land adjoining Manitou Heights. He...
Poetry of Place

Poetry of Place

Poetry of Place Jeff M. Sauve The valley of the stalwart pines beneath the college hill Away from all the campus stir—a place so quiet and still . . . So wrote St. Olaf College’s athletic coach, Ade Christenson, to his beloved in 1926. Others like him over the last...
Para-Pillars

Para-Pillars

Para-Pillars Emily Hoar Jeff Barber’s “Para-Pillars” memorializes thirty years of St. Olaf’s Paracollege, which provided innovative, individualized, interdisciplinary learning. The sculptor, class of 1978, is himself an alumnus of the “college within a college”...
Original Baseball Diamond (1887-1889)

Original Baseball Diamond (1887-1889)

Original Baseball Diamond (1887-1889) Jeff M. Sauve From 1887 to 1889, the original baseball field, situated at the foot of the hill below Old Main on the southeast side, was far from ideal. A raised wooden sidewalk traversed the outfield for students to climb the...
Oles on Parade

Oles on Parade

Oles on Parade Jeff M. Sauve Where else but in a homecoming parade do you see female students in puffy pastel crinolines perched on an Army jeep, or the physics club’s gigantic “Amazon Queen of Science” float? In the decade-plus following World War...