People and Days

From February 20 to December 4, 1915, the Exposition staged something special almost every day. The official tally was 828 special days and 966 special events, which Todd says averaged more than six celebrations and attractions daily. There were state days and nation days, days for counties, cities, fraternal orders and trades. There were also 928 congresses and conventions, which Todd calls "a world's record." This page follows the people and days that stood out, in the order they happened, with each fact checked against the fair's records.

February 20: opening day

At six in the morning the city woke to a deliberate uproar of fire bells, factory whistles, steam sirens, automobile horns, fife-and-drum corps, and policemen banging on trolley poles. Governor Hiram Johnson had declared the day a legal holiday. The crowd formed on Van Ness Avenue at Broadway and walked to the fair. When the head of the column reached the main gate at Scott Street, its tail was two and a half miles back. About 150,000 people marched, and women formed a second section that entered at the Fillmore Street gate. At ten o'clock the crowd began pouring through the gates, and it kept coming for an hour. President Wilson then pressed a golden key in the White House. The signal went by wireless from Tuckerton, New Jersey, to antennae on the Tower of Jewels, and it opened the doors of the Palace of Machinery and turned on the fountains. At the same moment Lincoln Beachey took off in his biplane and looped over the grounds. That day 255,149 people came in. The history page has the full story.

February 27 and March 6: the road races

Two of America's great automobile races were run on a temporary course laid out through the grounds. It went around the racetrack at the west end, where the track was covered in planks, and through asphalt streets past the palaces of Varied Industries and Mines at the east end, with hay bales at two right-angle corners. The International Grand Prize was run on February 27 in steady rain before about 65,000 people in seven grandstands. Dario Resta won in a French Peugeot, covering 104 laps and 400 miles in 7 hours, 7 minutes and 57 seconds, at a little over 56 miles an hour. Todd's account of the weather:

"It rained. Then it smiled a bit at the effect, and rained again; smiled again, rained again, until the joke was all gone out of it."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 3 (1921), on the Grand Prize

The Vanderbilt Cup had been set for February 22 but was rained out and run on March 6, over 300 miles. Resta and his Peugeot won again. Todd believed it was the first time on record that the same driver and car had won both races. The day's attendance was 135,673. A boy watching from a scaffold fell to his death.

March 14: Lincoln Beachey

Lincoln Beachey, the stunt flier who had looped over the grounds at the opening, flew again on February 22, 27 and 28. On Sunday afternoon, March 14, he went up in a monoplane, a new kind of machine for him. On his second flight of the day he had already looped, flown upside down and landed safely. Coming out of a steep dive over the bay, the plane broke up, and he fell into the water between the Army transports Logan and Crook at the Fort Mason docks. Modern accounts identify the machine as a Taube-type monoplane; Todd does not name it.

"It took a diver from the 'Oregon' nearly half an hour to find the wreck and fasten to it, and when it was hauled from the water its nervy pilot was still strapped in his place. The great crowd that had rushed to the scene stood silent, and men bared their heads."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 3 (1921)

Beachey's funeral was held at the Elks' Lodge on Powell Street on March 17. Ten days later, on March 24, Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall formally dedicated the Exposition in place of President Wilson.

From April: Art Smith writes in fire

The Exposition's next flier was a young aviator named Art Smith. On the night of April 3 he flew over the fair and dropped 3,000 tickets to Zone attractions. It was his first flight at San Francisco and the first Exposition flight since Beachey's death. Crowds gathered to watch him twice a week in the afternoon and three times a week at night.

"By day he left long festoons and loops and figures-of-eight high in air from smoke pots at the tips of his vans, and at night the places of these smoke pots were taken by magnesium flares with which he went trailing double lines of fire in the most erratic paths through the velvet sky."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 3 (1921)

Smith wrote "ZONE" across the sky on Zone Day, May 27, and the Masonic square and compasses at 11 p.m. on June 26. On November 8 he came back, landed at the Ferry Building, and climbed to about 3,500 feet over the grounds before 75,000 people. On closing night his plane turned over and over above the Marina "in trailing wreaths of fire." A modern historian dates his first night flight to April 22, which conflicts with Todd's date of April 3.

April 6 and November 6: Helen Keller

Helen Keller came to the fair more than once. On April 6 she lectured on "Happiness" in the Palace of Education. According to Todd, she also "saw" Edward Berge's bronze Wild Flower in the Palace of Fine Arts with her fingertips. November 6 was Helen Keller Day, and it ended with a dinner at the Massachusetts Building honoring her and the educator Maria Montessori, who was also at the fair that year.

May–July: Saint-Saëns and Sousa

The Exposition's music program ran for all nine and a half months, and its most distinguished guest was the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. He arrived on May 21, "in his eightieth year," having written an official piece for the fair, Hail! California. On May 23 the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Karl Muck played his Third Symphony in Festival Hall, and an audience of nearly 4,000 called him to the stage. He conducted three Exposition concerts, on June 19, 24 and 27, with more than 12,000 attending. At each concert Hail! California was played by the Exposition Orchestra together with John Philip Sousa's band.

Sousa brought his 65-piece band for nine weeks beginning May 22, playing daily before the grandstand in the Court of the Universe. He led massed bands on Zone Day. On Woodrow Wilson Day, July 1, the audience stood for "The Stars and Stripes Forever." On the Fourth of July he conducted three bands together before more than 10,000 people.

June 5: Luther Burbank

The plant breeder Luther Burbank had his own day on June 5. A bronze plaque in his honor was unveiled in the South Gardens, and at a reception he gave away seeds.

July 3–5: Independence Day

The Fourth was celebrated over three days, with a combined attendance of 338,627. The public holiday fell on Monday, July 5, and drew 190,846, the biggest crowd since opening day. William Jennings Bryan spoke on "The Meaning of the Flag." Congressman Julius Kahn read the Declaration of Independence, and Edwin Markham read his "Ode to Freedom." Earlier that week, from July 4 to 7, the International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace met at the fair, opening its sessions in the Massachusetts Building.

July 17: the Liberty Bell

The Liberty Bell came west at San Francisco's request. The campaign had begun in 1912 with a petition signed by a quarter of a million California schoolchildren. The Bell crossed the country by way of Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Washington and Oregon. At San Francisco it was paraded up Market Street and Van Ness Avenue on a truck covered with roses and brought in through the Scott Street gate. Liberty Bell Day, Saturday, July 17, drew 113,672 people. The orator of the day was Champ Clark, Speaker of the House. The Bell stood in the loggia of the Pennsylvania Building under constant guard and spent its nights in a fireproof vault. Guards estimated that visitors used $200 worth of camera film on it every day. It left on November 11, after lying in state overnight under the Tower of Jewels. The round trip covered about 16,000 miles and passed through 24 states.

July 21: Theodore Roosevelt

Former President Theodore Roosevelt arrived on July 20 to a crowd of 10,000 at the Ferry Building. The next day, Roosevelt Day, he spoke in the Court of the Universe to what President Moore called the biggest gathering since opening day, "at least in any one spot." Moore asked the crowd, "Who built the Panama Canal?" The crowd shouted back, "Teddy!" His speech was titled "Peace and War."

"He spoke from notes, but with great vehemence, and as he reached the end of a sheet he would crumple it in his hand and throw it angrily to the floor."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 3 (1921)

At a dinner the following evening he told San Francisco that anyone in the country who could come to the Exposition and did not "is lacking in intelligence."

Summer: disasters, choirs and battleships

Illinois Day and Chicago Day celebrations planned for late July were called off after the Eastland disaster in Chicago on July 24. The Welsh Eisteddfod, a festival of music and poetry, ran from July 27 to 30 with $25,000 in prizes. Its choral contest ended with the $10,000 prize divided between the Chicago Haydn Choral Union and the Oakland Eisteddfod Choir, and 1,200 voices sang Messiah before 7,000 people. On August 1 the battleships Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin arrived with about 650 Naval Academy midshipmen. They were the first battleships to pass through the Panama Canal. On August 25 the Lincoln Highway party drove in after crossing 3,384 miles from New York in five cars.

All season: Ford's assembly line

In the northeast corner of the Palace of Transportation, the Ford Motor Company ran a working assembly line. For three hours every afternoon except Sunday, a crew of 40 to 45 men built a car every ten minutes as the chassis moved along at 15 inches a minute. The first car rolled out within four minutes of the fair's opening. By the end of the season the line had turned out 4,338 cars, eighteen a working day.

"Investigation showed that automobiles were being born inside the grounds faster than they could be tagged."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 4 (1921)

All season: the transcontinental telephone

A few weeks before the fair opened, on January 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell in New York spoke to Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco over the new transcontinental telephone line, 3,400 miles long. At the fair, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's exhibit in the Palace of Liberal Arts had a small auditorium with a receiver at every seat. Several times a day, visitors could "listen to New York" as headlines from the New York evening papers were read to them across the continent. (Todd elsewhere calls a Wilson–Moore call the "first" transcontinental conversation; his own telephone chapter gives the honor to Bell and Watson.)

September 2–3: Taft and the mortgage

William Howard Taft, who had signed the fair into existence and broken ground for it in 1911, returned for Taft Day on September 2. He planted a redwood in "Taft Circle" with the same silver spade he had used at the ground-breaking. "If that tree grows as most redwoods grow I am a fixture," he said. The next night was "Out of Debt Day." Moore handed over a check for $110,159.02 to pay off the last of the Exposition's building mortgage. Taft then burned the mortgage with a long toasting fork.

"...with the red fire-light flickering on him and his face beaming with relish of his task, so that he looked like some ruddy and benignant Lucifer in evening dress, former President Taft thrust the mortgage into the flames."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 3 (1921)

A few days later, on Goethals Day, September 7, the builder of the Panama Canal planted a tree from Panama near Taft Circle (see The Canal). Admission Day, September 9, drew 182,321.

September: the suffrage petition

Suffragists had a stronger presence at this fair than at any before it. Todd says it was "the first exposition at which woman suffragists ever exhibited." The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage kept a booth, held meetings there three times a week, and collected signatures all season on a petition to Congress for a federal suffrage amendment. More than half a million names were gathered. According to modern histories (Todd does not tell this part), the Union's Woman Voters Convention met at the fair in mid-September 1915. On September 16 it sent the petition east by automobile with the poet Sara Bard Field and two companions, Maria Kindberg and Ingeborg Kindstedt. Field presented it to President Wilson in Washington on December 6. Accounts differ on whether the send-off itself took place on the fairgrounds.

October 21: Edison Day

Thomas A. Edison came to the fair with Henry Ford, and the two were mobbed by well-wishers at the Inside Inn. Over the new transcontinental line Edison spoke to his laboratory in Orange, New Jersey. Todd says it was the first time since 1878 that Edison had heard anything by telephone. On Edison Day, October 21, the Exposition gave a luncheon for Edison and Ford. Each guest received a model of the first incandescent lamp. In Festival Hall Edison was presented with a commemorative medal. He had agreed to come only if he did not have to make a speech, and he kept to that. The day's attendance was 96,688.

"...the long, gangling, white-haired man with the Lincolnian smile, accepted with a silent bow and promptly gave to his wife, who was sitting near."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 3 (1921), on Edison receiving his medal

The Henry Ford museum says Edison and Ford also visited Luther Burbank on the trip. The Exposition's own history does not record that meeting.

November 2: San Francisco Day

San Francisco Day was set for the anniversary of Portolá's discovery of the bay. It drew 348,472 people, nearly 70 percent of the city's population and the largest crowd of the season until closing day. There were 30,000 raffle prizes, and a sham battle was fought before perhaps 75,000 spectators. That day's attendance pushed the total past 16 million. On November 20 came California Day, when Governor Johnson planted a redwood. From then on crowds grew as the end approached, and ten of the season's twenty-three 100,000-plus days fell in its last three weeks.

December 4: closing day

Closing day was fair after a night of rain. At noon, Wilson's closing toast was read in the Court of the Universe to a crowd that "could not have numbered less than 150,000." The day's attendance was 459,022, the biggest of the year. At six o'clock the palaces were formally closed. That night President Moore stood before the crowd and said, "Friends, the Exposition is finished. The lights are going out." The lights faded. The last searchlight rested on the statue Descending Night, and "Taps" sounded from the Tower of Jewels. Art Smith looped overhead in fire, and six hundred mortars fired over the Marina. The last visitors left after four in the morning. See The Story of the Fair.

Source: Todd, vol. 3 and vol. 5, ch. XXIV.

What we could not confirm

Some stories often told about the fair do not appear in its official record. The Exposition's history makes no mention of Harvey Firestone traveling with Edison and Ford, of a visit by Buffalo Bill Cody, or of an appearance by the boxer Jess Willard. We have left them out until better evidence turns up.

Sources

• Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition (1921): vol. 2, chs. XLVIII (opening day), LXXIV ("Nine and a Half Months of Music"), LXXV (special events); vol. 3, chs. I–XXXIII (the season month by month); vol. 4, ch. XLV (Ford assembly line), ch. LXXI (the telephone), ch. XV (the suffrage booth); vol. 5, ch. I (congresses), ch. XXIV (attendance), ch. XXXIV (closing day).
• Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), music and special events.
• John D. Barry, The City of Domes (1915), on Beachey and the aviators.
• Modern: KQED, "Lincoln Beachey" (2020) and Wikipedia, "Lincoln Beachey," on the Taube monoplane; Panorama (journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art), "Art Smith, Flying at Night, and the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair," on Smith's dates; National Park Service, "Suffrage Envoy Sara Bard Field," and Library of Congress, "Women of Protest" timeline, on the suffrage petition; The Henry Ford, "Edison and Ford: A Lasting Friendship."