Having found great success across several eras of the National Football League, the San Francisco 49ers are firmly entrenched as one of America’s iconic professional sports franchises. The 49ers were first founded in 1946 as a member of the All-America Football Conference, joining the NFL three years later when the leagues merged. They broke through for their first major success in the 1981 season, when QB Joe Montana led them to their first championship with a victory in Super Bowl XVI. Montana went on to win three more Super Bowls in the ‘80s, and his successor, fellow Hall-of-Famer Steve Young, helped the team win its fifth title in 1994. The 49ers played in San Francisco’s famous Candlestick Park from 1970 to 2014, when they moved about an hour south to the newly constructed Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. The new stadium hosted Super Bowl 50 in February, 2016.