Penn State's athletic symbol, chosen by the student body in 1906, is the mountain lion, which once roamed central Pennsylvania. H.D. "Joe" Mason, a member of the Class of 1907, conducted a one-man campaign to choose a school mascot after seeing the Princeton tiger on a trip with the Penn State baseball team to that New Jersey campus. A student publication sponsored the campaign to select a mascot and Penn State is believed to be the first college to adopt the lion as a mascot. With Penn State's locale at the foot of Mt. Nittany, in the Nittany Valley, it makes perfect sense that Penn State's mascot emerged as the Nittany Lion®.