In 1913 Professor Charles Ferris of the Engineering Department proposed the development of a new athletics field to replace Wait Field (located where the Walters Life Sciences Building now stands). He and others formed The University Realty Company, a stock company, to purchase a four-acre tract (part of Courtney Hill) that held 21 city lots on which were 35 small houses adjacent to a large ravine of approximately four acres already owned by the university southwest of the Hill. The cost of the property was $26,000. The company sold shares in the business for $10 to students and alumni, with each stock owner agreeing to give UT a five-year option on the land and give up all rights to the same upon repayment of the original amount invested plus 6 percent interest. (The UT Cooperative Bookstore originally subscribed $1,000 and made later subscriptions amounting to $3,600.) The sale of the stock was to allow borrowing an additional $15,000 required for the purchase of the land.
Ferris was unable to borrow funds in the name of the realty company, because the company was insolvent, so he borrowed money in his own name to hold the enterprise together. By 1919 the company was $22,453 in debt, and Ferris was being threatened with increasing numbers of lawsuits by investors. William Simpson Shields, UT trustee, local bank president, and clothing manufacturer, saved the land by paying the debt. He gave the tract to the university with the proviso that the field be created within one year and that UT should match his gift in order to create and equip the area as an athletics field. Nathan Dougherty, professor of civil engineering and chairman of the Athletics Council, realized that the dirt excavated from the Hill for construction of Ayres Hall would make a substantial contribution to the fill dirt needed for the field. He and the Athletics Council had a 48-inch pipe laid down the ravine to carry water from above and had the future field filled with fifteen thousand cubic yards of dirt from the Hill. An additional forty thousand cubic yards of dirt was needed, though, to level the field. Dougherty convinced Shields to purchase and give two additional lots adjoining the field, which were graded onto the field by a contractor to provide the remaining fill needed. The field, however, was still rough and uneven.
The idea of getting a holiday to be utilized by the student body to complete work on the field was conceived by Jim Stewart. The work of organization was placed in the hands of McGregor Smith, later to become president of Florida Power and Light, who proposed that students, faculty, and administrators should work side by side and prepare the field for baseball, football, and track. Smith pushed the idea through the All Students’ Club and carried it all the way to President Morgan. Smith organized students, faculty, and administrators for a two-day work project on March 16–17 in 1921. Participants leveled ground, installed a drainage system, laid out the fields (including the track), excavated the track and filled it with cinders (mostly obtained from the Knoxville Gas Works), and ditched and placed drain tiles as needed on what had been named Shields-Watkins Field by the board of trustees in November 1919 when Shields’ offer was accepted.
The field was immediately inaugurated by a baseball contest between the varsity and a group of alumni, and the baseball team played the first intercollegiate game on the field on March 19, losing 6 to 7 to the University of Cincinnati. William Shields pitched the first ball to the first batter, who was President Morgan. The first football game on the field was on September 24, 1921 (Tennessee 27, Emory and Henry 0), and Rufe Clayton scored the first touchdown.
The name of the field honors Shields and his wife, the former Alice Watkins. This field is today encircled by Neyland Stadium, for which the first stands were built in the year of construction of the field.