The Chestnut Burr continued to be a formidable force on campus for many decades. In the early 1950s, the yearbook printed about 5,000 yearbooks per year. The annual budget of $23,000 was a whopping 46 times more than what Bill Taylor, one of the school's first administrators, made in salary during the summer of 1937.

One section sure to catch the attention of students each year was the pictorial of The Burr Queen. As one adoring caption-writer swooned, "Even royalty must attend class."

The Chestnut Burr continued strong through the 1960s and 1970s, but by the early 1980s, interest was severly dwindling. While The Burr was still churning out the same level of content as decades past, with the number of commuter students growing, demand for a yearbook declined.

(Click here to hear advisor Ann Schierhorn discuss waning interest.)

The last yearbook-style Chestnut Burr was produced in 1985. The following year would usher in a new form of The Burr, one that would prove successful for journalism students and the university heading into the Twenty-First Century.

Read more