Marking the Panama Canal

by

Lauren Roberts

This is, if memory serves, the third time I have written about bookmarks connected with expositions. The first one was about the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris, the second about the original Exposition, the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations organized by Prince Albert in London, and now this, the third, about the Panama-California Exposition held in 1915-1916 to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and San Diego’s role as its first North American stop. It was a Chamber of Commerce event, designed to promote and aid San Diego businesses who stood to profit by the opening of the Panama Canal and the cruise ships that would stop in the city on their way up the California coast.

In 1914-15, San Diego, the city that marks the intersection of the California state line and the country of Mexico, was at the time of the Exposition small. In 1910, the city’s population was 39,578 compared to its northern neighbors, Los Angeles at 319,198 people and San Francisco at 416,912. To think itself capable and worthy of a world class exposition took some pluck and vitality.

Not surprisingly, that “pluck and vitality” was connected to the Chamber of Commerce, specifically to its president (who also founded the Southern Trust and Commerce Bank), G. Aubrey Davidson. He felt the city should establish an exposition in 1915 to celebrate the opening of the historic canal. Naturally, it would also help revive the city’s shaky economic foundation, which was still in recovery from the Wall Street panic of 1907.

The Chamber elected several powerful men to primary appointments including Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., son of the former president, and John D. Spreckels, son of sugar king Claus Spreckels. But the most important was Colonel David “Charlie” Collier as Director-General, an honorary title that nonetheless bestowed the power to shape Exposition policies. He chose City Park as the location, declared “Mission” as the architectural style, and  “Human Progress” as the theme.

But it wasn’t a straight line from decision to Exposition. Several cities including San Francisco and New Orleans declared they would host the exposition that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal. In fact, in January 1910, delegates from San Francisco directed San Diego to abandon their Exposition plans. Spreckels responded by donating $100,000 to San Diego for the Exposition, and other subscribers followed, bringing the total to one million dollars. When New Orleans pestered the U.S. Congress to recognize it as the host city (with accompanying federal dollars), Collier arranged a back room arrangement with San Francisco Exposition stockholders in which San Diego would support San Francisco’s bid for an international fair as long as they could hold a smaller fair at the same time. Residents of San Diego passed a park improvement bond for the Exposition even as Congress began to invite foreign nations to participate in the SF one.

Collier continued to push, and several months later the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution inviting Mexico and other Latin American countries to attend the San Diego Exposition.

More machinations followed, and the San Diego Exposition plans plummeted and rose with them, but on May 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill authorizing government departments to permit the free (of taxation) admission of exhibits for the San Diego exposition.

In turn, San Diego voters  approved a second set of park improvement bonds and plans began to move forward. Despite a Park Board resignation in protest over paying Frank P. Allen $25,000 annually as Director of Works, plans for the Exposition were in full swing. Landscape architects John C. Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. were hired to lay out the grounds, and New York architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was appointed supervisory architect.

It didn’t stay that way, however. Conflicts and disagreements over architectural styles, grounds layouts and more led to the Olsmsteads resigning at which point Allen took over their duties for layout. With Allen’s support, Goodhue eventually created a “fairy-tale city . . . of cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces and solemn temples.” He also designed the California Quadrangle, the center of the exposition. Architectural details from missions and churches in southern California, Mexico, Spain, Italy complemented Muslim decorative details such as minaret towers, reflecting pools, oversized urns. There were also  domes, towers, arches, colonnettes, arcades, bells, pergolas, fountains, and incredible gardens. 

The Exposition was set in a mesa in the park that was 300 feet above sea level. Thus situated, it would be seen from anywhere in the city. And from inside the park the view including the popular Mission Bay could also be seen.

But the Exposition, like all of them, was really developed with an eye on creating a vibrant economy, not only for vendors who would supply the visitors with necessary accommodations, but for businesses who could display their wares and entice consumers by showing off their processes as well as their finished products. The expositions publicity department went into high gear to ensure that its supporters got the most for their money:

It is hard to pull oneself back to the twentieth century for it is wondrous sweet to dwell in the romance of the old days, to peer down the cloister and try to see the shadowy shapes of the conquistadores creeping up the dell from their caravel at anchor in the Harbor of the Sun.

No other land has quite that atmosphere. No other land has the romance and lazy dreaming of this sort. No other land had such splendor of waving palms and slim acacias and lofty eucalyptus, such a riot of crimson and purple and gold, such brilliant sky or flashing seas or rearing peaks, and perpetual comfort of weather in the perfect harmony which exists on the mesa in San Diego. It is a land where God is kind. It is a land of loveliness that makes men kind. And, decked in such fair garments, it beckons to the stranger in other lands and bids him come. It is Opportunity.

Opportunity must be maximized, and it was decided that City Park was much to dreary a name for the exposition’s home. It became Balboa Park, the name it retains today, and an appropriate one since it was named after Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.  

Groundbreaking ceremonies began July 19, 1911, and continued for several days with  High Mass, various parades, speeches by politicians, dances, music, floats, athletic events, banquets, a grand ball, a mission pageant, a regatta, and more. But all was not well behind the scenes. More resignations followed, and more followed that. But problems were not limited to personnel. Landscaping proved problematic when to plant trees, Allen discovered that more than 100,000 holes had to be drilled or blasted. What became Cabrillo Canyon—where the famous bridge would soon be erected—had to have its installed landscaping removed to make room for it. Then several buildings, including the Water Department and City Pound, as well as some machine shops were moved away. 

Installed were an aviary, pens for deer, bear, buffalo, and goats, an elk enclosure, a rose garden with more than 6,500 plants, and surrounded by lawns, palms, poinsettias, and eucalyptus. Flowering plants covered the arcades and faces of buildings. Sprinkler systems, seeded lawns, 50,000 trees (including 700 orange, lemon and grapefruit trees in the citrus orchards), twenty miles of iron pipe, ten miles of storm drain, and about ten miles of sewer connections and electric conduit were also laid down.

One of the exposition’s most famous features, Puento Cabrillo or Cabrillo Bridge with seven arches designed in an aqueduct style. Work on it commenced in September 1912, and ended on April 12, 1914. The bridge’s highest point rises 110 feet above the floor of the canyon of the same name. Its seven arches spanned 450 feet. Since it led up tot he fair’s main western entrance, it provided a breathtaking vista of the city’s southwestern portion and helped to emphasize the “kingdom on the hill” atmosphere.

The exposition’s buildings at the east end of Cabrillo Bridge included Administration, California State, Fine Arts, Science and Education, Indian Arts, Sacramento Valley, Home Economy, Foreign Arts, Commerce and Industries, Botanical, Varied Industries and Food Products, and Southern California Counties.

The California Quadrangle was the most remarkable of all. It marked the formal entrance into the Exposition after passing through the West Gate. It had a Greek-cross plan, with a rotunda and dome at the crossing and minor domes and half-domes at the sides. A tower in the southeast corner rose 180 feet, and on the façade were several images of important historical figures.

On October 2, 1914, the state of California presented to the city the California building. It was intended that this, along with the Fine Arts, Botanical Building, and the Organ Pavilion, would remain in the park after the Exposition ended.

The Japanese Tea Association, and the Japanese and Formosan governments erected a tea garden and pavilion near the Botanical Building. It included Japanese cedar, wisteria, and bamboo, as well as winding paths, a stream, and lanterns, pebbles, carp, a bonsai and ginkgo tree, and carved folo birds. The entire area was meant to soothe and enchant, and it did indeed do that. 

There was also amusement concessions, agricultural and other exhibits by International Harvester, Lipton Tea, the state of Nevada, and Standard Oil. An Indian Village and Painted Desert occupied a five-acre mesa complete with cholla, sagebrush, yucca, cedar posts, and sandstone from the Indians’ various indigenous areas.

In 1913, work was already underway on the Home Economy, Indian Arts, Science and Education, Botanical, Varied Industries and Food Products, and Southern California Countries Buildings. All other buildings began in 1914. Because of the interest the project was generating, visitors were allowed to enter the grounds to watch the progress for a 25-cent admission.

On opening night, December 31, 1914, Spreckels, standing on the stage of the Organ Pavilion, said to the president of the Park Commission: “I beg you to accept this gift on behalf of the people of San Diego.”

Then, at precisely midnight (PST), President Woodrow Wilson pressed a telegraph button in Washington, D.C. The button was specially made, the first five-dollar gold piece that had been contributed to the exposition. The flash, captured by a wire at the Western Union exhibit, turned on the electric power, and immediately a light, attached to a balloon 1,500 feet overhead, came on. It illuminated a three-mile area in the sky, revealing the silhouettes of the exposition’s buildings. Guns were fired. Searchlights from an off-shore cruiser threw their beams on the tower of the California Building. Bonfires on the summits on both nearby and faraway hills added their light. One thousand mines on Exposition grounds exploded, sirens wailed, confetti was flung, hats were thrown, fireworks shot off, and cheers arose from those attending.

Opening day was no less impressive. One part, designed primarily for that day, was the 2,500-foot street known as “The Isthmus.” Its attractions included a China Town, with an underground opium den where effigies in wax demonstrated the horrors of addiction; a replica of a gem mine; a whirring disc called “The Toadstool,” which tossed people wildly about; another ride called “Climbing the Yelps,” which took patrons into the interior of an erupting volcano; a Ferris wheel; a roller coaster; a historic display called “The Story of the Missions”; an ostrich farm in a structure modeled after an Egyptian pyramid; a motion picture plant where films of scenes along the Isthmus were made daily; a Hawaiian Village with the entrance in the shape of a volcano like Kilauea; and an aquarium presided over by King Neptune consisting of tanks of ocean-filled water in one of which a helmeted diver rescued a waxen damsel from a sunken stateroom.

Six hundred and forty acres of Exposition grounds were surrounded by rose-trellised fences. White buildings were complemented by green vines and bright flowers around their openings, and striped blue and orange awnings and draperies over doorways and in windows added to the spectacle. But the fair was not meant to overwhelm, and to that end there were shaded footpaths with seats and ledges in and around the buildings. The Botanical Building was highlighted by a reflection lagoon. At night, the stunning colors became a glorious symphony of black and white. 

Visitors could “travel” to seven states without leaving the fairgrounds. The state of California chose to separate out its exhibits into the various counties. And more concessions, which had not been ready on opening day, included a dance hall called  where a couple could dance for five cents; a 250-foot-long replica of the Panama Canal with ships moving up and down in the locks; and a “War of the Worlds” fantasy in which New York City in the year 2000 was destroyed by Asians and Africans who arrived in battleships and planes.

At the ten-acre Indian Village, Trading Post, and Painted Desert about 300 Indians from Apache, Hopi, Navajo, Supai, Taos, and Zuni tribes resided as they did in New Mexico and Arizona. They wove rugs and blankets, shaped pottery, pounded silver and copper into jewelry and ornaments; performed ceremonial dances and offered prayers to their gods. (One critic caustically made note of the steamer trunks and kitchen clocks inside their “homes.”) Other living demonstrations included that of 500 U.S. Marines in a tent city, and of four troops of the First U.S. Cavalry in a model camp.

The Fine Arts Building displayed American paintings by William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Joseph Sharp, and John Sloan. On the lower floor of the building, the Pioneer Society of San Diego exhibited an Indian raft, a large photographic view of San Diego in 1869, court records dating from 1850, and portraits of men and women connected with the early history of San Diego.

Industrial exhibits were filled the Commerce and Industries Building and the Varied Industries and Food Products Building. Visitors could see the new “gasifier” demonstrated by the Moreland Distillate Motor Truck Company or watch the Pioneer Paper Company subjected roofing paper to intense heat to illustrate its lasting qualities. Globe Mills Company baked bread, the Genesee Pure Food company packed and wrapped products with the aid of machinery, and the Towle Products Company turned out maple syrup and maple sugar inside a log cabin. Naturally, free samples were provided and larger quantities would be sold to those who wanted to take them home. 

The Southern California Counties exhibits showcased china painting, hemstitched aprons, an inlaid table made of 2,866 pieces of wood, cows made of creamery butter, and elephants made of English walnuts, a surprisingly “countrified exhibit for this urban area of California. But there was also the citrus orchards, a five-acre model farm, a tractor field, a Lipton Tea plantation from Ceylon, and a five-acre International Harvester field.

Places to eat abounded, but the most elegant was the Cafe Cristóbal. Here, celebrities joined high society, and in between the courses patrons could dance to a ten-piece orchestra. Over 2,000 people tried to get reservations for the opening night New Year’s Eve celebration—a problem since the restaurant seated only 600. The restaurant managed to squeeze in an early seating, thus doubling the number of diners. The official banquet was the next night, January 1, and it was for men only, a restriction that caused the number of attendees to plummet to 500.

Despite marketing the Exposition to families, women were not initially represented in the planning of the event. This changed in 1915 when Alice Klauber formed the San Diego County Women's Association and notified the Board that if provision were not made for women, the Association would advertise the fact in every women's club in the country. The Board changed its view, and these women lobbied for and won several women-oriented rooms on the grounds. In fact, the Official Women's Board Headquarters Rooms, the latter being the sequel to Alice Klauber's Association, had two local women act as hostesses each day of the year. It also maintained a Silence Room where a nurse in charge would watch over women resting on cots.

The Panama-California Exposition was so successful that it remained open for part of 1916. Even the majority of the fair’s pavilions still exist, including one of San Diego's most recognizable symbols, the California Building. Obviously, it was a thrilling experience to those fortunate enough to visit. It certainly inspired the unknown maker of this bookmark, who started with a linen postcard purchased there, to create this special memento for herself. The view shows the California Quadrangle from the rose gardens. The words below the image and the swirly lines on the sides seemed burned into the leather, reminding me of the results of a wood-burning kit I had as a child. I have used this as a bookmark once, for a book I was reading on the history of Los Angeles, and each evening, when I placed the bookmark on a new page, I would run my finger over it, feeling the texture of the linen and soft, thin leather, and  wonder if the child or woman who made this would be pleased to know that it has not only survived but become a treasure and a pleasure.

If you are interested in learning more about this Exposition, images of it as well as links can be found here.

Bookmark specifications: Panama-California Exposition
Dimensions: 9" x 2 1/4"
Material: Leather with a linen postcard attached
Manufacturer: Homemade
Date: 1915
Acquired: eBay


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately the same number of books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.