Beaver Stadium has been used by Penn State since 1960; it replaced New Beaver Field, which served as Penn State's home field from 1909-1959.

Overall, NC State had a record of 1-8 at this field, losing the one game they were ranked beforehand and posting a 1-6 record when Penn State was ranked.

  * Non-conference games

Evidently, Penn State can have a hard time moving on. When the Nittany Lions outgrew "Old" Beaver Field, they saved on construction costs by tearing down and reconstructing the old grandstand anew at New Beaver Field. That grandstand stood sentinel over Penn State athletics for nearly 3 decades before finally falling to progress, being replaced with wooden stands. Those stands were in turn replaced with metal bleachers which were, like their predecessor, dismantled and reassembled in a new location on the State College campus.

You can't fault Penn State for holding onto bits of the past. For one, it's what makes college football so great: the mysique, the heraldry, and the traditions. It's also prudent and fiscally responsible. But more than that, they were continuing a football tradition nearly 70 years in the making. That tradition came with a good record: 183 wins, 35 losses, and 11 ties, including 23 seasons without a loss at home. Rather than abandoning that history wholesale, they brought it along with them, just as they had 60 years ago. They moved the entire 30,000 horseshoe-shape bleachers one piece at a time, 700 times, from their old location to a new spot just over a mile further northeast down Park Avenue -- that location became Beaver Stadium..

In addition to the relocated seating, Penn State added an upper deck added with about 16,00 seats along the sidelines -- much more desirous than the endzone seating originally envisioned -- for a revamped capacity of 44,000 persons, or up to 46,284 with temporary stands in the open east endzone. Site prep began in March 1959, and in mid-November 1959, the old stands began to move; the relocation was finished by February 1960. Work, minus sodding and other minor details, was materially complete by May 1960. When it opened, it was the largest all-steel stadium in the country.

The only problem that remained: how do you re-name a field which already has carried "New" in the name for 5 decades? Pondering the dilemma, the Pittsburgh Press jabbed that the school ought to name the venue New New Beaver Field. The problem was solved quickly enough by dubbing the new plant a stadium rather than a field; Beaver Stadium was chistened with a 20-0 win over Boston University before a crowd which scarcely challenged its capacity [1].

In 1969, the press box was enlarged and 2,000 seats added to the stadium (though exactly where they were added is unclear to me -- possibly the area immediately in front of the press box?) thanks to bonus funds secured following Penn State's win over Kansas in the 1969 Orange Bowl. The Nittany Lions did not hold pat for long, moving from 48,344 to 57,538 in 1972 by adding 80-90 rows to the upper section of the both the north (press box side) and south stands; other work at the time included the construction of additional restrooms and refreshment stations, and sandblasting and painting the entire bottom section for the first time. Around 200 seats were added to the south endzone in 1974 by replacing the old wooden stands with steel ones, pushing the capacity to 57,723; even more endzone bleachers were added in 1976 to push the venue to a capacity of 60,203 persons [2] [3].

After having sold out for 5 consecutive seasons, Beaver Stadium was enlarged again in 1978. By far the most ambitious of the stadium's enlargements, the 10-month effort lifted the entire stadium 12-1/2 feet into the air, adding 20 rows of precast concrete stands where the running track had been located previously. The stadium was raised, rather than dug out as normal, because geologists felt that rock formations beneath the field would have required blasting, which likely would have damaged the existing stands. The work added about 16,000 seats and pushed capacity to 76,639 persons. The work also closed in the east endzone for the first time in stadium history. In 1980, two electronic scoreboards were added, with the primary one located above the east (south) stands; about 7,000 seats were also added in front of the endzone, allowing 83,770 persons to watch a game in Happy Valley. Lights were added in 1984, while the construction of walkways along the top of each endzone lowered the capacity by 400 [4] [5] [3].

In 1991, the Lions engaged in yet another stadium expansion plan, placing 10,033 new seats in a lofted north endzone upper deck, pushing capacity up to 93,967 persons, in addition to creating the venue's first upper level. The move also made Beaver Stadium the fourth largest in the NCAA, and second in terms of on-campus stadiums behind only Michigan Stadium, of Ann Arbor. The venue became the second largest regardless of location in 2001 after the south endzone was also made double-decker. The addition created 58 climate-controlled private suites, in addition to over 6,000 chairback seats, bumping the venue's total allowance to 107,282. This number was lowered slightly, to 106,572, in 2011, when several seats were removed in order to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act. The venue has otherwise been largely unchanged since then, though this is soon to change: in the summer of 2024, the Board of Trustees elected to provide several improvements to the stadium, including concourse enlargement, press box improvements, and other modernization efforts [6].

Photos of Beaver Stadium