Yellow Jacket Stadium

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good stadium has a story, and Yellow Jacket Stadium in Cleburne, Johnson County, well, this one starts the way the best Texas stories do: with somebody deciding that what they had just wasn't good enough anymore. See, Cleburne High had been playing home football games at Rhome Field for twenty years.

Twenty years of Friday nights, of wins and heartbreaks, of mud and dust and whatever else a Texas autumn could throw at a football field. But by 1939, they were ready for something bigger. Something that would last.

So work began on a replacement, and the Works Projects Administration, the WPA, stepped in with most of the funding. We're talking about an eighty thousand dollar stadium, built from concrete and rough cut Somervell County limestone. Not just poured and painted, limestone, hauled and cut and stacked into something meant to stand.

And stand it did. When it opened in the fall of 1941, what Cleburne got wasn't just a place to play football. It was ivy-covered stands climbing those limestone walls.

It was pilasters giving the whole place a dignity that said this town means business. It was seating for thirty-eight hundred people, ticket windows, dressing rooms, the whole arrangement. A real stadium.

Now, you fast-forward almost two decades, and you get to 1959. That's when Coach Brooks Conover brought a team onto that very same field, that limestone-and-ivy field, and they played their way to a state co-championship. On that same patch of ground where the WPA poured its concrete and Somervell County gave up its stone.

Yellow Jacket Stadium has hosted football games, other sports, community events, it has seen generations come through those ticket windows. Some places, you build them and they become more than what you intended. This was one of those places.

What the marker says

In 1939, work began to replace Rhome Field, where Cleburne High played home football games for twenty years. The Works Projects Administration (WPA) provided most of the funding for the new $80,000 stadium built from concrete and rough cut Somervell County limestone. It opened in fall 1941, with ivy-covered stands, pilasters, seating for 3800, ticket windows, and dressing rooms. The stadium has hosted football games, other sports, and community events. The 1959 state co-championship team, coached by Brooks Conover, played on this field. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2010