However, a few minutes of soil removal yielded the first big break. Unlike all of the other known fraternity points, no bare rock was initially exposed, only dirt and leaves. With the permission of university domain manager Nate Wilson, he began to excavate on Jusing simple digging tools and a brush. Eventually, however, he identified another promising clifftop. The first location he investigated revealed a number of old carvings, but few associated with Delts, and the large inscribed letters “ΣΑΕ” finally convinced him that it could not be Delta Point. Junior Aidan “Mitch” Shakespeare (University of the South, 2024), aware of historic accounts of the point, set out to find it along the plateau edge near the modern golf course equipped with a GPS device and scans of historical maps. The storied inscriptions, however, were nowhere to be found. Its general location remained known within the fraternity, and while an active member from 2015 to 2018, I often hiked to nearby Beckwith’s Point under the assumption that it was Delta Point. The point stopped appearing on maps after the 1950s, and modern campus guidebooks give no hint of its presence. The appearance of more exciting diversions for Beta Theta Delts, like movies, cars, and female students, probably didn’t help either. This may have been due to the construction of a golf course nearby, which destroyed much of the nearby woods and made the point less secluded. Wray wrote that he knew “of nothing more inspiring than being on ‘Delta Point,’ one of the cliffs, watching a sunset.” He described it as carved with the name “Delta Point” and the names of several members, including those of brother Hale, a founding father of the chapter, and Archibald “Archie” Butt, who died with the sinking of the RMS Titanic.ĭespite its importance to the chapter in those early days, knowledge of Delta Point’s exact location was eventually lost to successive generations. In an article for the January 1927 Rainbow, fraternity secretary Ralph M. Maps of Sewanee dated 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1946 all note its approximate location to the north of the university campus. One of the very first of these “fraternity points” was claimed by the Beta Theta chapter of Delta Tau Delta not long after its founding in 1883. Generations of men shared pleasant moments here, enjoying their brotherhood and watching the world go by. When the first fraternities opened in the 1870s and 1880s, their members congregated at certain overlooks, dedicating them by inscribing their letters. Young men (Sewanee did not admit women until 1969) chiseled names or initials into the stone of the clifftops to commemorate their visits. Naturally, when the university first opened its doors in 1868, excursions to particularly scenic views of the valleys below became an integral part of student life. It is surrounded on three sides by rocky cliffs that range from 20 to over 200 feet in height. The University of the South, located near Chattanooga, Tennessee, sits in the middle of a vast finger of sandstone jutting westward from the Cumberland Plateau. Through extensive research, we have been able to unearth their stories. These inscriptions date from the 1880s to the first World War, and include alumni of national renown as well as ordinary people from all walks of life. In the summer of 2021, one undergraduate made a personal contribution to his chapter history when he uncovered the original site of Delta Point, a lost rock outcropping near the university onto which some of the earliest Beta Theta Delts had inscribed their names and fraternity letters. By Owen LeGrone (The University of The South, 2018)īeta Theta Chapter, housed at the University of the South, has a long and distinguished history stretching back nearly 140 years.
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