The San Diego World's Fairs and Southwestern Memory, 1880-1940

2. Planning a Southwestern Exposition, 1915

Chapter T wo Planning a Southwestern Exposition, 1915 In late 1911, construction of the Panama-California Exposition began in City Park, which was renamed “Balboa Park” in 1910 after Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the conqueror of Panama and Central America. Through these efforts, the physical form and theme of the fair moved from imagination to completion. The Southern California exposition departed from the western European influences so prominent at American fairs, the neoclassical architecture and monumental Beaux-Arts planning chosen by the leaders of northern California’s most glamorous city. In 1913 the buildings and fairgrounds took shape to reveal something unique. D. C. Collier informed West Coast readers about the theme in Sunset Magazine: “The Progress and Possibility of the Human Race.” In no uncertain words, Collier claimed that the “most interesting things in the world are its peoples.” The exposition would highlight what different cultures and nations “are doing; what they are thinking about and what they are accomplishing.” The fair would educate Californians, westerners, and tourists about regional progress as well, in terms of the long and extensive cultural heritage of the Spanish borderlands.1 In November 1911, the exposition hired prominent members of the regional and national scientific community to enlighten visitors about “Man’s Progress.” The fair would profit from hiring Santa Fe cultural promoters, Fred Harvey Company service employees, Southwest Museum enthusiasts, and members of the United States National Museum (USNM), Smithsonian Institution. Entertainment would instruct, and human science would be pleasurable to San Diego visitors. With an anthropological and archaeological nexus spanning the country, the San Diego fair illuminated the importance of the cultures and peoples of the southwestern borderlands and Latin America, especially the racial —49— 50 Chapter T wo origins of humanity. Previous civilizations in the borderlands, Native, Spanish, and Mexican, would become features of southwestern memory. The Southern California Counties Committee and the Imperial Valley towns contributed exhibits to promote farming, ranching, and agriculture in the region, drawing links between the colonial California pastoral and the contemporary industrialization of the countryside. Visitors to San Diego could learn “how land which under other conditions was worthless may be made to blossom like a rose.”2 “Every exposition is educational ,” remarked Collier, “and the measure of its value as an educator lies in its revelation of the world’s advancement. If it succeeds in presenting this in its best form and manner, it has been the best educator, therefore the best exposition.”3 With much anticipation, the Panama-California Exposition rose from the grounds of Balboa Park. It was the first American fair dedicated to the memory of Amerindian and Spanish culture in the Americas. Before there would be an exposition, however, the city needed to build a majestic and imposing fairground. With strong financial and political backing, San Diego transformed Balboa Park into a fantasy land of Spanish colonial and mission-style architecture with verdant foliage and ample greensward. San Diego’s colonial inheritance, especially the important features of the historical Spanish landscape, was enhanced to promote the exposition. In 1907, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce hired Boston planner John Nolen to remake the urban landscape into the shining El Dorado of California. Nolen envisioned a monumental Mediterranean and Renaissance city, with esplanades cascading from the City Park to a beautifully developed San Diego Bay. The urban redesigning would connect country to city. In 1907, Nolen told his friend George Marston that San Diego could not afford to “lose many of the advantages that nature has presented to you as a free gift.”4 Balboa Park was the “free gift” of which Nolen spoke, the legacy of pueblo common lands established under Spanish town-planning principles . The park was a key landscape element that centered the modern development of San Diego. The exposition leaders recommended the park as the exposition site, located at Sixth and Laurel Streets across the 51 Planning a Southwestern Exposition, 1915 deep crevice of Cabrillo Canyon. There had always been brisk public debate about the integrity of the park. During the land boom of the late 1880s, where parcels of real estate sometimes changed hands a halfdozen times a day, there were many unsuccessful encroachments upon the land of the park. Advocates like George Marston, horticulturist Kate O. Sessions, botanical writer Mary Coulston, and others led efforts to stop real-estate speculators from carving up the parcel. Beginning in 1892...