Amateur teams began playing baseball in the area known as Sulphur Spring Bottom as early as 1870 when it was a popular recreation area noted for its natural sulphur spring. A wooden grandstand was built in 1885 to accommodate patrons of the Nashville Americans, who were charter members of the original Southern League. Several other professional baseball teams followed the Americans, but the ballpark's longest tenant was the Southern Association's Nashville Vols, who played there from 1901 to 1963. Sportswriter Grantland Rice coined the Sulphur Dell moniker in 1908.