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Historic place

Ute Stadium (Robert Rice Stadium)

451 S 1400 E, Salt Lake City, UT

A $133,000 timber-and-earth stadium opened in 1927 and ran for 70 seasons before the Utes tore it down.

📅 1927–1997🏛️ StadiumDemolished
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The story

Ute Stadium opened on October 1, 1927, with 20,000 seats and a 40-6 win over Colorado Mines. It was dedicated on October 22 with a 20-13 win over Colorado, with Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden in attendance. It cost $133,000, paid for with tax-free bonds and the ticket sales from two home games a year over ten years. The original structure used timber and concrete with earth fill.

Seats added to the north end in 1947 made it a horseshoe. After the 1971 season, health club pioneer Robert L. Rice gave $1 million for the first major renovation, and the stadium took his name in 1972. The field was lowered 9.5 feet in 1982, and the record crowd of 36,250 watched a 17-12 loss to BYU that November. For many years it doubled as a summer amphitheater. After the 1997 season, virtually all of it was demolished.

What's There Now

Rice-Eccles Stadium, which opened in 1998 on the same footprint.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

A 1965 AFL preseason game here was won by the Denver Broncos.
The record crowd of 36,250 came on November 20, 1982.
The 1982 south end bleachers survived until after the 2019 season.

Nearby history

Kingsbury Hall

1395 Presidents Circle · 721 m away
The University of Utah's 2,009-seat hall, dedicated in 1930, started Ballet West and Utah Opera and hosted Eleanor Roose

Oak Hills Drive-In

2775 E 1000 S · 1.4 km away
A drive-in just southeast of Hogle Zoo let neighbors pay $50 for a speaker hookup and watch from home.

Hires Big H

425 S 700 E · 1.8 km away
A former grocer built a cinder-block drive-in near the University of Utah in 1959 and put a family pink sauce on the bur

Bill and Nada's Cafe

479 S 600 E · 2.1 km away
A 24-hour cafe that served brains and eggs, kept Nada's name for decades after her death, and closed with Bill in 1999.

Trolley Square (Utah Light and Railway car barns)

602 E 500 S · 2.1 km away
E.H. Harriman spent $3.5 million on streetcar barns here; the last trolley left in 1945 and a mall opened in 1972.

Centre Theatre

299 S State Street · 3.3 km away
An Art Deco movie house with a 90-foot tower opened Christmas Eve 1937 on the site of the old Knutsford Hotel and was go

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rice_Stadium