Painting the 'A': Colorado State University tradition celebrates 100th anniversary

If you looked west from Fort Collins on Sunday, you might have noticed the “A” on the hillside just below Horsetooth Reservoir looked a bit brighter.

That “A,” placed there by the Class of 1923 to signify that Fort Collins was home to Colorado Agricultural College, got a fresh coat of paint — carrying on a 100-year tradition at the school now known as Colorado State University.

Working in three shifts of 50 people apiece, members of the CSU Alumni Association and about 20 current students took turns with paint sprayers, each focused on a specific section.

“It’s really cool to be part of something that’s been going on for 100 years,” said Colin Hill, a 2022 graduate now working as a process development engineer for Tolmar. “This is my third time doing it right here, and it’s still fun just to be a part of it, even if I’m just a small part of it.”

Hill stood out among the group of painters on the first shift, wearing the same green-and-gold Game Day overalls that he wears to CSU football games each fall.

“My thought process is these overalls are so CSU — they’re green and gold — and I thought, man, if I get any paint on these things, it just makes them more CSU, not less CSU. So, having a little bit of paint from the ‘A’ on there, I think, is just one of the best parts of all.”

There were a lot of flecks of white paint on the hands, arms, clothing and shoes of those painting the “A” on Sunday. The sprayers, powered by four generators, can be a bit messy, said Marc Parker, owner of Maximum Painting. They were able to put 200 gallons of environmentally friendly, zero volatile organic compounds paint, mixed in equal parts with 200 gallons of water, on the hillside to restore the “A” in about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.

Much of the prep work had been done the previous day by Parker and his team, the CSU chapter of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and members of the alumni association. They had hauled the sprayers and generators, donated by Herc Rentals, to the site and outlined the “A” using caution tape. Alpha Gamma Rho’s chapter president, Finley Burns, and three of his fraternity brothers camped out at the site overnight to keep an eye on the equipment and to make sure no pranksters tried to overshadow the “A” with other logos, as students from the Colorado School of Mines (1932) and Wyoming (1949) each did.

“We figured we better keep the tradition alive and make sure that nobody comes up here and fiddles with it,” Burns said.

Fraternity members hauled the paint up early Sunday morning.

So, all that was left to do when the bus dropped each shift of workers off near the top, along the east side of Horsetooth Reservoir, was to form groups and start painting. Not just the rocks, but the entire hillside within the taped outline, including weeds and shrubs as high as 2 1/2 feet above the ground.

Parker got involved in the painting of the "A" in 2020, when CSU canceled adding a fresh coat during the COVID-19 pandemic . He was preparing an estimate for the alumni association, he said, and decided he and his crew could simply do it , free of charge. He's overseen the work and his company has donated the paint each year since then.

The painting is done a lot differently now than it was in the early years, said John Matsushima, a retired CSU professor who helped paint the “A” as a freshman in 1939 at what was then Colorado Agricultural College. Freshmen walked the 3 1/2 miles from campus to the bottom of the hogback each fall, then used a “bucket brigade,” passing buckets of the lime-and-water mixture used as paint from one person to the next, up the hill to the painters, who used brushes and brooms to apply it.

“I was at the bottom, filling the buckets with paint,” Matsushima, 103, said Sunday from the Smith Alumni Center at Canvas Stadium, where volunteers gathered to ride buses to and from the work area, less than a half-mile from the worksite.

“It’s way different times,” his daughter, Nancy Oliver, said after she and her husband, Gene, returned from their morning shift painting the “A.”

“We got the bus, air-conditioned, and then we didn’t have to walk very far, and we didn’t carry the buckets. We were just spraying.”

Matsushima said the “A” wasn’t for “Aggies,” as many people believe, but for “Agriculture,” based on the school’s original name. CSU’s athletic teams didn’t start using the “Aggies” nickname until 1937, 14 years after the “A” was first placed on the hillside, CSU athletic historian John Hirn wrote in his book, “Aggies to Rams,” published in 2009.

“It’s a good tradition,” Matsushima said.

Sophie Matthews, the alumni association’s student and recent graduate engagement specialist, said the 150 available spots to help with the painting filled up quickly, and that there was a waiting list of others wanting to help.

“This is a CSU tradition that has been rooted for 100 years,” she said. “So, it’s pretty special to be able to oversee and help out and see our community come out in full swing and maintain this tradition, not only this year for the big milestone but every year since. It’s just been absolutely awesome to see it. … It’s really cool to see the Ram pride on the hill.”

When the painting was done, the fraternity members were planning to clean up the site, returning paint buckets to Parker and taking the sprayers and other rented equipment to a car wash for a thorough cleaning before returning it to Herc Rentals.

“We just love doing it,” Burns said. “We meet great people, and we have a blast doing it. It’s a long day, and it’s a lot of vertical feet, but we enjoy doing it; we enjoy being able to say we paint the ‘A.’ I know I’ll go home today and get a hundred texts saying, ‘Hey, the ‘A’ looks good. You painted it.’ ”

History of the Aggie "A"

December 1923: After discussing the construction of an "A" on a nearby hillside for years, students vote to build the rock-formed letter and get the project started.

1924: The "A" is painted for the first time using a bucket brigade of freshmen male students.

1932: A large "C" is burned next to the "A" by some pranksters ahead of Colorado Agricultural College's upcoming homecoming football game against Colorado College.

1944: After two decades of intermittent painting and maintenance, the annual tradition of freshmen students painting the "A" seems to begin.

1949: University of Wyoming pranksters sneak past fraternity pledges tasked with guarding the "A" and paint W.U. across it with yellow paint.

1985: Members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity take over annual painting duties of the "A."

2000s: CSU football players join Sigma Alpha Epsilon members to help tag-team the painting effort.

Coloradoan reporter Erin Udell contributed to this story.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com , x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news .

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Painting the 'A': Colorado State University tradition celebrates 100th anniversary