ldier Field for a Catholic celebration entitled the Eucharistic Congress.
1962 - 116,000 turned out to hear evangelist Billy Graham.
September 19, 1971 - The Chicago Bears began using the facility as a regular season home and capacity was cut to 57,000 to bring season ticket holders closer to the field. Chicago defeats the Pittsburgh Steelers 17-15 before capacity crowd of 55,701 in the Bears’ first game since moving from Wrigley.
1978 – With the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Park District began to reconstruct the aging stadium with lights, playing surface, locker rooms, and rebuilding the stadiums’ plank-board style seating with chair back and armrests.
1981 – With renovations complete, Soldier Field could welcome 66,950 visitors.
September 1988 – Soldier Field converts turf from AstroTurf to Kentucky Bluegrass.
1994 – Soldier Field hosts the opening ceremonies of the 1994 World Cup soccer play, the first time the competition will by played on American shores.
2003 - Soldier Field completes a 20-month renovation that modernized the stadium and surrounding parkland for multi-purpose event use. The stadium grounds now host over 200 event usage days per year.
2011 - Soldier Field is awarded the status of LEED-EB from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). Soldier Field is the first existing North American stadium to receive the award of LEED-EB Certification and the first NFL stadium to receive this prestigious award. LEED-EB stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Existing Building.
2014 - Soldier Field hosted the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team as they faced off against the USA Eagles on November 1, 2014 marking the All Blacks first match in the US since 1980. The All Blacks defeated the Eagles 74-6 to a sold-out crowd.
2015 - Soldier Field hosted the final concert performances by legendary American rock band the Grateful Dead on July 3rd, 4th and 5th in celebration of the band's 50 year history. More than 212,000 Deadheads rocked out at Soldier Field for the Fare Thee Well shows over the holiday weekend, shattering stadium attendance records.
2016 - Copa America Centenario, in celebrating their 100th-anniversary edition of the South American championships, selected Soldier Field to host four matches: Jamaica vs. Venezuela (June 5th, 2016), USA vs. Costa Rice (June 7th, 2016), Argentina vs. Panama (June 10th, 2016), and the Semi-Final between Chile and Colombia (June 22nd, 2016).
Interesting Facts About Soldier Field
Soldier Field has hosted rock concerts, thrill shows, rodeos, tractor and truck pulls, circuses, fireworks displays, stock car races, sunrise services, marching band concerts, open-air operas, skiing and toboggan events including a ski jump event from a 13-story platform.
The stadium’s underpinnings consist of 10,000 giant wood piling foundations driven an average depth of six stories through landfill to bedrock.
It hosted the first boxing event that drew a gate of over $2.5 million (Dempsey-Tunney, 1927), the first ski meet held in a stadium, and the all-time largest football crowd (123,000). The largest crowd for any event in Soldier Field was 260,000 on Sept. 8, 1954, for the religious Marian Year Tribute.