The Big C lays on the side of Charter Hill and looms high above the University of California campus. Before its creation, the night before Charter Day, the freshman and sophomore classes would meet at the hill to partake in an event called "rush". During this event the freshman class would try to make their way up the hill to write their numurals on the hillside. Meanwhile the sophomore class would try to prevent them from climbing up the hill by any means necessary. After the event was shut down as it was deemed "too boisterous and time taking", the classes of 1907 and 1908 came up with a different tradition. They came together to create the idea of the Big C. Together on March 17, 1905, the two classes created a line of people to pass supplies up the hill to start work on the project. On Charter Day March 23rd, 1905, the Big C was finally finished. Traditionally the Sophomores were the caretakers of the C and every Charter Day the "deed" was transferred to the new Sophomore class. This deed was lost in the 1911 move from Bacon Library to Doe Library.

At the time of its creation, unity is seen as the underlying symbol and driving factor for the purpose of the Big C. Before the Big C, that area of Charter Hill was seen as dangerous due to the rush event. As we see from its creation story, the two classes came together and to showed that there was an alternative to an event like the rush. As the two classes unified to make a new place, the symbolism and purpose of that place changed. The Big C symbolized the unity between the former faction like classes and it's purpose was to create a new unified tradition. This event played a big role in describing the shift in the greater UC Berkeley community as the 1905 Blue and Gold yearbook noted that, "Here, for the first time, the jarring factional and class strife dies out and, in its place, there comes a unification of sentiement and activity in the university family." This primary source shows how the creation of the Big C is central to the changing culture of the Berkeley community. In "The Work of Community Gardens: Reclaiming Place for Community in the City", it says, "rather than a static sense of community linked to territory, place is seen more as "an ever shifting constellation of trajectories which poses the question of our thrownthertherness". The Big C fits into this well as the place of the Big C is ever shifting as its symbolism has changed even since the beginning. The divide between the class turned into the unity of the classes and the school overall. This unity is forever sealed on the Big C as the plaque on the right reads, "In memory of the Rush, buried by the classes of 1907 and 1908, March 23, 1905, Resquicat in Peace."