Cone Athletic Park I was a neutral site venue used by area teams from 1902-1906, replacing the use of Athletic Park and the Central Carolina Fair Grounds as the area's primary college football and baseball venue. Cone Park II opened in 1906 located just a couple blocks to the north, and was used by minor league baseball teams in Greensboro until its demolition in the 1950s.

Overall, NC State had a record of 0-1 at this field, with its only game a neutral-site non-conference loss. There was one canceled game which was likely intended to be played against Guilford College at this location in 1903, however, due to lack of details it is not known for certain which park the game was intended to take place in.

  * Non-conference games

In March 1902, athletics enthusiasts from around North Carolina gathered in Raleigh to form a new baseball league, the North Carolina League. The North Carolina League was not technically new, though: it was a continuation of the 1901 Virginia-North Carolina Baseball League. The V-NC League, which played from April to August 1901, was initially home to six teams, with Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Richmond representing Virginia, and Raleigh and Wilmington showing out for North Carolina [1].

The second time around proved little better. The new North Carolina league included Raleigh, Charlotte, and Wilmington, but added Greensboro, Durham, and New Bern; the league was spearheaded by Raleigh, who began a push for a league of at least six (but preferably eight) teams in January 1902 [11] [12]. The first half of the season went well, but shortly after their mid-season break, things went awry. Wilmington, who had been playing poor ball all season (and consequently losing money) folded their team on July 5th [13] [14]. The league had intentions for the so-called Orphans to play on while the league searched for a new host city, but the members had already been payed off and had no obligation to remain [15]. Wilmington's withdrawal and the evident difficulty in finding a second team precipitated in Charlotte's departure from the league, this time peaceably rather than acrimoniously. Charlotte chose to remove itself due to its distance from the other clubs [16].

The final days of the league were a hectic mess, with rumors of teams being kicked out mixing with a request that members of the defunct teams report to Raleigh immediately* or risk being banned forevermore from league events. Simultaneously, news was swirling that the few remaining teams were jettisoning their best players to other leagues in a desperate effort to remain solvent [17] [18]. In the fray, Durham rescinded their team, and in the end, Raleigh, Greensboro, and New Bern all agreed not to persue a championship pennant [19].

Out of all the chaos, though, Greensboro got her first true ballpark. A team association was organized in March 1902, and upon its organization, Caesar Cone, a wealthy industrialist who had opened several mills in the city, agreed to donate some of his land towards that end [20]. Work began quickly, and the park, replete with grandstands and a fence, opened by late April [21] [22]. By June, the grandstands' capacity was doubled, though to what number it did not say; estimates for capacity baseball games the following years hovered around 1,200 [23] [24]. In 1904, the field hosted one of the earliest night baseball games in the state, pitting Guilford College against Olson's Cherokee Indians, a barnstorming team from Watervliet, Michigan; light was furnished by a traveling Pullman railcar, which was also outfitted with a portable grandstand capable of seating 1,000 spectators; a score has not been found [25].

In 1905, a second iteration of the Virginia-North Carolina League was organized, this time with a team in Greensboro; the league again folded before the completion of the season. Despite the fact the city had no prospects of fielding a professional team for the coming season, the grounds for Cone Park were moved a couple hundred yards (the distance was noted to be as little as "a short distance" and as much as 500 yards) northward**, at the cost of about $1,000 (about $33,400 today). As part of the move, the field orientation was also rotated so that the sun impacted fielders' vision less [26]. This second venue is referred to as Cone Athletic Park II.

"So far as grounds are concerned," said future mayor and local baseball enthusiast Leon Brandt, "we can have a better park than we have ever had, and only about one hundred yards north of the Cone Athletic Park where we have had so many fine games. The [ground] is level, and without much cost we could make a ball park that would be an inducement to bring other clubs here." He went on to predict that, should work start by late February, it could be completed prior to April, start of the regular ball season [27]. Work began on March 12th, and was completed a few weeks later; NC State and Guilford christened the new park on April 6th -- NC State won 26-3 before a crowd of 500 [28] [29].

Because NC State did not play at Cone Athletic Park II, I will not be detailing its history as closely. Brandt's prediction rang true, however, and by 1908 Greensboro had a baseball team: the Greensboro Champs -- later renamed the Patriots. Other than one season in 1917, when the league was suspended due to World War I, the Patriots remained in Greensboro, playing at Cone Field II through 1929, when they moved to World War Memorial Stadium [30].

* The likely reason "orphan" players were asked to go to Raleigh was so that the remaining teams could auction them off to other leagues, or rebuild their own skeleton team with those players.

** The park probably moved roughly from the location shown in the map below, near the interesection of Summit and Bessemer, to a location closer to the intersection of Summit and Wendover -- see a visual here. We know for a fact that the first iteration of Cone Park wasn't on the northeast corner of Summit and Bessmer, as that lot was bought in 1903 (link). Similarly, we can rule out the southwest corner, the location of St. Leo's Hospital, which began construction in 1904 (link). That leaves the northwest corner and the southeast corner; it is possible the field was on the northwest corner, however that was the land which the Caesar Cone Estate (link), and it seems unlikely he would want the ballpark directly on his land. That leaves the southeast corner as the most likely location, however this cannot be fully confirmed.

Pictures of Cone Athletic Park

Unfortunately, none of the pictures below can be completely confirmed to be of the original Cone Athletic Park, as it was laid out from 1902-1906. Additionally, no photos of the grounds being used as a football field were found. However, since the same structure was used at both locations, pictures of the fields are likely to be rather similar aside from any trees or buildings in the background.