Colorado Goes to the Fair: World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893

Prologue: Metropolis of the West

Metropolis of the West 1 Prologue We have been passing, as a people since 1876, through a period of prosperity unparalleled in the history of nations. It has been the golden age of American enterprise, American industry and American development. Most fitting it is, therefore, that the people of the greatest nation on the continent discovered by Christopher Columbus, should lead in the celebration of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of that event. —Official Guide to the World’s Columbian Exposition It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows her prophecies faster than she can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. —Mark Twain I have struck a city—a real city—and they call it Chicago. . . . I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages. —Rudyard Kipling at the time of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, Chicago billed itself as the “Metropolis of the West,” but even Chicagoans had to admit that the title was new to the city. In the space of one lifetime, Chicago had risen from a swamp to a bustling urban center. In those seventy years prior to the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago grew from a frontier outpost on the prairie to the second largest city in the United ...