Colorado School of Mines
Colorado
1874
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): silver/blue (1923-1931); blue/silver (1934-1935)
The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “parti per chevron” was also used quite frequently. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Later the IBAC began to use a per reversed chevron division and may have employed (although this is not certain) a division per bar on rare occasions. Confusingly, in Intercollegiate Bureau lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]” which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the IBAC intended to describe.
Academic hood lists published by the Bureau in 1927 and 1969 described the Colorado School of Mines as having a hood lined navy blue above silver gray, but in 1948 and 1972 the lower color was cited as being silver. Since the IBAC often used the term “silver gray” to refer to silver or light gray, the variant descriptions by the Bureau are synonymous. The 1969 Intercollegiate Bureau source further stated that the two colors were divided per chevron, as did Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962). Oddly, Sheard described the upper color as “light navy”.
Because the IBAC used both “navy blue” and “Yale blue” to describe a dark shade of blue, the hood lining the Bureau had earlier assigned Colby College in 1895 or 1896 (Yale blue above silver gray) was potentially similar to the hood lining of the Colorado School of Mines. But since Colby’s blue was actually a royal blue, the two hoods were not identical.
Nonetheless, here the Colorado School of Mines has been reassigned a hood lining with a heraldic division that echoes the blue sky and silver mountains that inspired the college’s colors: dark blue above silver, divided per reversed chevron.
Students at the Colorado School of Mines selected silver and blue in 1874 to symbolize the silver found in their state’s mines and the clear blue skies overhead. Vintage collegiate memorabilia from the school used a medium to dark blue primary color with light blue or silver for contrast.
