A car decked out in roses drives through Rose Stadium during a Texas Rose Festival in the 1940s. (Courtesy)

The Tyler High School Lions planned a light workout to prepare for their season opener against the Fort Worth North Side High School Steers, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported on Sept. 9, 1948.

Tyler Head Coach Ed Henning reported his squad to be in good condition and “declined to make any prediction on the possible outcome.”

The game was going to be the first to be played in the newly built $225,000 Tyler Rose Stadium, the newspaper reported.

The game didn’t end well for the Lions — the North Side Steers shut them out 12 to 0 before 7,500 fans, according to newspaper reports.

But Tylerites still had something special to cheer about — the new stadium, called the largest in East Texas at that time, which could seat 20,000.

The stadium was built in 1947 from a school bond referendum, which would be repaid with receipts from sporting events, according to the newspaper archives. The Tyler City Commission, as it was known then, voted in April 1947 to transfer about five acres of the East Texas Fairgrounds to the school district for it to be built.

Tyler school board members voted to choose the name “Tyler Rose Stadium” for the city’s best-known industry after surveys showed the public favored the name.

No new stadium would have been complete with a new scoreboard — a Sept. 24, 1948, Tyler Morning Telegraph article referenced “a huge electric scoreboard donated to the schools by Claude Holley, automobile dealer and sports enthusiast.”

The clock was an International Business Machine device, which could be used as the official timer, the article stated.

In addition to high school and college football, the stadium has hosted entertainers, such as James Brown in 1970, numerous July 4 celebrations, and, of course, the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933.