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

1. Southern California Gets the Panama Exposition

Chapter One Southern California Gets the Panama Exposition “We have decided to make this exposition different in character from any other,” thundered D. C. Collier, director-general of the San Diego Panama-California Exposition. He sat confidently in front of the United States House Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions and persuaded its members that San Diego’s exposition would “work out the problems and demonstrate the resources, possibilities, and future of the great Southwest and of Latin America.”1 With $2,000,000 in stock subscriptions and a $1,250,000 municipal bond earmarked for the event, Collier emphasized the city council had committed an additional $5,000,000 for public improvements in the county. With San Diego’s population nearing forty thousand, Collier could boast that the city was the “pluckiest, nerviest, and gamest city in the United States and probably the world.” He also asked Congress for assistance to make the fair legitimate in the eyes of the world. Congressman John Raker of California, Collier’s ally, introduced a bill to “invite Mexico and the Republics of Central and South America to participate in the exposition.” This fair, he explained, “is to be entirely different in its character from the exposition at San Francisco.”2 The fact that Collier even made an appearance in Washington, DC, showed the rising stature of San Diego in Congress. San Francisco already had planned the Panama-Pacific International Exposition for 1915. That city’s congressional supporters had deceived San Diego the previous May by withdrawing their support for a second fair in Southern California. With Collier in front of the committee, it appeared San Diego had recovered from San Francisco’s rebuff. He reassured Congress that San Diego’s smaller fair would be a regional event with limited international participation and would accentuate the unique qualities of the Southwest. He emphasized San Diego’s “chief attraction —17— 18 Chapter One would be reclamation, irrigation, and forestation of arid lands.” “We would also gather together representatives of the Indian tribes of the Southwest,” assured Collier. He also noted that Indians from “Southern California, from Mexico, and Central and South America” would constitute a comprehensive history of the indigenous people of the American hemisphere.3 By narrowing the scope of the Panama-California Exposition, Collier thought both Panama expositions could be realized in 1915. Each could serve the broader interests of the United States in both the Pacific hemisphere and Latin America. As San Francisco and San Diego fought in Congress, statewide politics brought into focus the intent of the San Diego exposition. And out of national political maneuvering came San Diego’s unique claim about the importance of Spanish and Indian heritage in the Southwest. Collier spoke bluntly about how regional memory and tradition would differentiate the San Diego fair from the San Francisco fair, which mirrored the neoclassical atmosphere of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and European World’s Fairs. There would be Indian villages to “illustrate the character of their dwellings, their mode of living,” said Collier, which served as the “last great composite picture of the Indian tribes of the Pacific coast.”4 “In carrying out the general idea of the exposition,” said Collier, “we have not only adopted old-mission architecture, but every gate has a Spanish name” within the general plan of the grounds.5 So persuasive was Collier the committee gave approval wholeheartedly. San Francisco interests in Congress, however, initiated another hearing on the bill and badgered Collier, Raker, and other supporters. The bill died in the Senate. San Diego’s exposition directorate accused northern California congressmen of political chicanery. As was well known, world’s fairs always proved beneficial for every city that had ever held one, Philadelphia in 1876, Chicago in 1893, and St. Louis in 1904. World’s fairs were rarely lucrative, but they did establish host cities as places of commerce, culture, and tradition.6 In 1881, land speculators initiated a rapid boom locally when the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway announced that National City, located south on San Diego Bay, would become the terminus of its 19 Southern California Gets the Panama Exposition transcontinental line. With hopes San Diego would be a major southwestern port, East Coast capitalists far removed from Southern California poured money into the city and county. The economic bust of 1887–88 literally wiped out fortunes in a...