Belpre City Schools

The 1956-46 Belhio contains one of the earliest known references to the Belpre Gold Eagles.

2022 is a special year for Belpre City Schools as we will be celebrating our Sesquicentennial 150th Anniversary of our formation!  Belpre Village organized a new school district for Belpre, Ohio in 1872 with a three-person Board of Education: W. W. Northrup, N.B. Adams and C.A. Brown.  Soon after the Board hired J.B. Hulburt to serve as Principal of a newly organized high school.  A few short years later, Belpre High School held its first graduation on June 11, 1875, at the Methodist Episcopal Church.  Fast forward to today, we just held our 146th annual Commencement Ceremony for the Class of 2021.  Stay tuned for upcoming announcements on special events and activities that we anticipate hosting as we celebrate this historic milestone.

               Since becoming Superintendent of Belpre City Schools nearly three years ago I have learned as much as I can about our history and traditions.  But two questions that have caught my attention as unsettled: why are we the Golden Eagles, and if we are Golden Eagles, why are our colors orange and black?  After several hours of research, with special thanks to researchers at the Belpre Historical Society for hosting me on a pair of occasions and providing access to all of the published yearbooks as well as the Belpre City School Board of Education meeting minutes, I am excited to share my findings.

               The first yearbook for Belpre High School (named the Belhio) was issued in 1925 and, after a few years, was resurrected again.  The earliest reported reference to the Belpre “Golden Eagles” is contained in the 1945-1946 edition of the Belhio in its listing of the basketball team’s accomplishments for the year.  A few years later, the term Golden Eagles again appeared in the 1949 yearbook which congratulated the Belpre High School “Dept. of Defense” Basketball team and the “Golden Eagles [which] had a very outstanding season…”  A few years later, the Belhio 1954-1955 edition refers to the football team as the “Golden Eagles” and the 1955-1956 edition again used the “Golden Eagle” identifier in that edition while celebrating Belpre High School’s first undefeated football team.  Yearbooks in the 1950s and 1960s continued to make references to the Golden Eagles and, in 1963, the school newspaper, previously called “The Argus” was renamed “The Golden Eagle.”  This was followed in 1968 by the first reference to the “Belpre High School Golden Eagle Marching Band” which had previously been identified in yearbooks as simply the “Belpre High School Marching Band” since it was formed in 1934.

Confusing the matter, despite being referred to as the “Golden Eagles” since at least 1945, subsequent yearbooks and media articles through the decades also routinely refer to the team or athletes on our teams as simply “Eagles.”  In addition, many of our uniforms over the years have proudly contained the word “Eagles” in script but never “Golden Eagles.”  Images used in our yearbooks and on our sports teams further cloud the history of the mascot.  Some of our yearbooks use an eagle with a white head while others use a generic-looking eagle with no white head.  Jersey eagles tend to just be generic black eagle shapes.  The 1973 Belhio is a good example of the problem: the cover includes a golden eagle with sharp talons, the mascot in use at the time was a generic-looking eagle with no white head and the cheerleading uniforms used a while headed eagle with a “B” proudly displayed on its chest.  In contrast, the 1960 yearbook has a cover with an orange eagle with a white head but the band eagle logo is golden in color, and uniforms in the photo are orange and black but white and gold for the drum major (that’s not the only time there is a golden colored eagle, the 1986 Belhio includes the mascot uniform used by the school which was gold in color).  For the folks keeping score at home that is 5 different logo/eagle variations in just two yearbooks!  It is clear therefore that there was no historic consensus on what type of eagle is the “Belpre Golden Eagle” (or even if the “Golden Eagle” was an actual golden eagle or a white-headed bald eagle in a golden color).       On the subject of color, another subject of my research was why we are the orange and black. Although I have heard several anecdotes or theories, a news article discussing the Belpre Class of ’36 reunion clearly states that the school had no football program at the time and but that their colors were orange and black.  The Belhio in 1940 also includes a class song which states “we love your colors which are orange and black.”  Although it is unclear when we adopted the orange and black it is clear that they have been our official colors for many years.  But lovers of controversy can still rejoice: Belpre has used at least eight different shades of orange of the years, many of which are on display at the Belpre Historical Society.  Similar to the eagle logos discussed above, there was no consensus on the “Belpre orange.”  The district has therefore historically deferred to whatever was commercially available for our yearbooks, sports uniforms, and branding rather than settling on its own image.

The Belpre varsity letter display at the Belpre Historical Society.

A few years ago, the Belpre City School District began to use its current logo during the levy campaign which was designed by Michael Church.  Alumni will see our district begin to standardize the use of this logo, as well as its colors, in our future branding efforts.  The logo contains a streak of white on the head as an homage to prior logos and includes two different shades of orange to capture the spectrum of orange that has been used over the years: one a more deep orange and the other a more golden orange.  We will also standardize the use of “Golden Eagles” across our publications and jersey designs rather than simply “Eagles.”

As I conclude, I would also like to announce that Belpre City Schools will be hosting a series of town hall meetings this fall regarding our school facilities, the first of which will be on September 1, 2021, at 6:30 at Belpre Elementary School.  All are welcome to come and engage with us.  As many of you are aware, our “newest” building is what is now Belpre Elementary School which was built in 1969.  Our educators are hard at work implementing the Portrait of A Graduate in our district, our answer to what a 21st-century learner needs to gain in school to be successful, and we would like to engage with our stakeholders and community about what a 21st-century school facility could mean for our students. We are grateful to each of you for your support of the Belpre Golden Eagles and hope to engage with you this coming year as we celebrate our history and prepare for the future of our school district!