Logos and Uniforms of The San Francisco 49ers - The Early Years (1946-63)

The Early Years (1946-63)

The 49ers changed uniform designs and color combinations quite often in their first eighteen years of existence. From the team's inception in 1946 through the early 1960s, the San Francisco 49ers usually wore red, white or silver helmets, white or light-gray pants, and cardinal red (home) and white (road) jerseys. The 49ers' original logo was a mustached 49er gold miner from the 1849 California Gold Rush, dressed in plaid pants and a red shirt, jumping in midair with his hat falling off, and fired pistols in each hand: one nearly shooting his foot, and the other pistol forming the word "Forty-Niners" from its smoke. By the mid-1950s this logo showed the prospector jumping against a backdrop of Kezar Stadium, the team's home from 1946 to 1970.

Original uniforms consisted of plain red jerseys with white front and back numerals and no trim. Pants were white, and leather helmets were in several colors. In 1950, concurrent with the team's admission to the NFL, the red jersey gained three parallel white stripes on the sleeves; this feature, with modifications and updates, has been implemented on the team's jersey ever since. Also around this time, the helmets were gradually changed over to a silver-colored plastic. An entirely new look appeared in 1953; helmets were red with a silver center stripe. White pants were given a thin red-black-red tri-stripe. For the 1954 season silver-grey pants were introduced, and in the 1955 season the jersey numerals gained black trim that created a "dropshadow" effect. These 1955 jerseys, along with white pants, served as the model for the team's "throwback" uniform in its championship 1994 season. Red socks included three white stripes. In 1956 the helmet was changed to solid white and the black outlining and shadowing effect was eliminated from the jersey numerals. The pants striping became solid red. In 1957 the 49er uniform was altered again; helmets were made gold, accompanied by beige-gold, unstriped pants. Jerseys and socks remained the same, but in accordance with the NFL's 1957 rule ordering primary-colored "home" and light "road" shirts for each team, the 49ers debuted white road jerseys with three parallel sleeve stripes; the middle stripe was red, the top and bottom gold. This striping was replaced in 1958 by a wide red crescent shoulder stripe. So-called "TV Numbers" appeared on both jerseys in the same year.

Throughout the middle and late 1950s, and the early 1960s, the 49ers were one of just a few NFL teams (the Chicago Bears were most prominent) to use helmets made by Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Goods; these helmets were of slightly different shape than those made by the Riddell company, which for more than a half-century have been a prominent supplier of NFL team headgear. Yet another radical alteration was made to the 49er uniform in 1960. Appearing were silver helmets with three widely-spaced red stripes; the center stripe was thicker. Home jerseys were unchanged, but road jerseys featured a new dual crescent shoulder stripe in what is usually called the "UCLA" style. An alternate logo was designed in the 1960s featuring a shield-shaped crest formed from the number "49", with a football in the upper right quadrant and "SF" in the lower left quadrant. In 1962 the helmet was redesigned to feature a red-white-red triple center stripe (the white middle stripe was wider). The earliest version of San Francisco's current primary logo, an intertwined white "SF" within the center of a red oval, also debuted in the 1962 helmet design. By 1972-73 the oval was slightly smaller in size and gained a thicker black border.