
Gunrock is the name of the official blue horses horsebased school mascot of UC Davis.  It frequently makes appearances at UC Davis sporting events, acting as the face of UCD Athletics.

Students have described it as an evil trollish looking thing. Others have called it a giddy cow in a horses costume. It stands in as mascot at UCD sports games, as we have yet to discover specifically what an Glossary aggie really is.

 Whered Gunrock Come From? 
For a long time there was just the loose concept of the Mustang representing the school, and UC Davis was therefore without an actual costumed mascot for many decades until 2003 when a blue mustang came trotting onto the campus. He took on the name Gunrock after an online internet poll showed that the UCD community overwhelmingly supported this appellation.

But where did the name Gunrock come from?

Gunrock is a very important name in the history of UC Davis, according to UCD Sports Information and Aggie Pack.  In the 1920s, the efforts of choosing a school mascot led many Cal Davis University Farm students to consider their agricultural and veterinary school roots.  Eventually, they chose the glorious mustang... a strongwilled, enduring, intelligent beast exhibiting exactly 1 horsepower of strapping vigor.

But what of the name?

In the 1920s, the University Farm was also used as a breeding facility for supplying highquality stock thoroughbreds for the United States Army Remount Service. Around this time of mascot namecalling, a thoroughbred named Gun Rock was brought to the campus for the Army breeding program. The offspring of Triple Crown winner wiki:wikipedia:Rock_Sand Rock Sand and race mare Gunfire, it turns out that Gun Rock was a relative of the famed racehorse, Man o War, and coincidentally, was also a relative of another famous racehorse named Sea Biscuit, repopularized by the 2003 Summerhit movie of the same name.

In honor of this handsome creature, the students of the 20s chose Gunrock as the name for the official school mascot, which was reaffirmed by the UCD community in 2003.  In two separate votes of the ASUCD during the 1990s, students voted to change the mascot to a Cows cow.

Sometime in 19992000, one of the free rewards that you got for attending an Aggie Pack event was a plush blue horse stuffed animal. You could say that this was probably the first appearance of the mascot in some kind of physical form.

Pictures


 Visiting Team Mascots 

When Gunrock trots out onto the field what sort of mascot will he be up against?

  Stanford Tree
  UC Irvine Anteater?


Any way we could find a list of Gunrocks real identities?  I believe the current one just got his PhD, and that made me wonder who it really was.  Users/AllisonEriksen
    I know the current Gunrock I think he would prefer it to be kept a secret.  Users/RobRoy
    A gunrock just recently (March 2006) passed on the gunrocktorch, so to speak.  We ought to figure out who all the past gunrocks are.  There was a Davis Enterprise article about the old gunrock during this time, if someone wants to try and find it in their archives.
    The old Gunrock is friends with Michael Leahy of KDVS.  I wont say more than that.  Users/JeremyNewton

20081227 18:18:23 nbsp United States Army Calvary?
Its CAVALRY.
Calvary is the hill where Jesus was crucified.
Cavalry are mouted soldiers. Users/rswhitaker
   Why are you complaining after you fixed it?  Somebody made an honest mistake and everybody else missed the error until you caught it.  No need to mock everybody involved.  Even your comment has a benign error: Cavalry are mounted soldiers, not mouted soldiers.  Nobody is perfect... the process of helping out each other with editing is how the wiki works. Users/JabberWokky Evan JabberWokky Edwards
