It crosses my mind about once a week how it would be absolutely great to go on a road trip. Gas is cheap, the weather is getting nicer - and then I remember that there's a pandemic and we all need to stay home to get this thing over with. So this week, I went through the archives and looked for some things relating to the World's Fair and Humboldt County's presence in three of them. Humboldt County made a showing in these fairs to help promote tourism and travel to the region as travel became easier, safer, and faster.
The World’s Fair, now oftentimes referred to as World Expo, is commonly said to have started in 1851, when the United Kingdom hosted “The Great Exhibition” which showed off the manufacturing prowess of the United Kingdom at the time. People from across the country and around the world came to this and future expositions to learn about new advancements, different cultures (although oftentimes the cultural exhibits were racially biased and skewed), and new places. Humboldt County shows up in at least three Expositions: The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (also known as the Columbian Exposition), the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939.
The 1893 Chicago World's Fair
The fair opened May 1, 1893 and closed October 30, 1893 and took place at Jackson Park on the shores of Lake Michigan. Each state had its own building that housed exhibits- California’s was a 3 story Mission-style building that was the second largest in the fair after Illinois. The State sent 156 train car loads to Chicago to fill the display. Like all of the buildings built for this exposition and many buildings in other expositions, the buildings were made to be temporary. For the Humboldt County exhibit, the organizers got $5500 from the Board of Supervisors and local businesses, which totals to about $155,000 in today’s money. County residents Frank A Wick and John Dolbeer of Steam Donkey fame, nominated fellow resident Martha Herrick to lead the exhibit setup.
Herrick was born December 11, 1841 in South Bend, Indiana. Family history traces her lineage back to a Brigadier-General who helped George Washington sign treaties with local tribes. Martha went to St. Mary’s College. She arrived in California in 18589 via Panama to visit a sick brother and married Rufus F. Herrick in San Jose the following year. Her husband worked with local native people. According to Leigh Irvine, who wrote a biography on Herrick along with dozens of other notable Humboldt County Citizens in 1915, Mrs. Herrick and her husband “together... did much for the red men, treating them with kindness and consideration, protecting their rights and at all times according them justice and fair treatment” and were given the “most of the wonderful collection of Indian relics”.
Mrs. Herrick was well known for her knowledge on local tribes and according to Irvine,
“ received gold and silver medals from the Anthropological Societies of the United States and England for her knowledge of the lost arts of the Indians. She is the author of a treatise on the habits and customs of the Indians of Humboldt county (extracts from which were published in the Ethnological Bureau of Smithsonian Institution), which is recognized as an authority on Indian sanitation. Another work along this line is now being compiled by her, its publication being eagerly awaited by those interested in Indian lore, Mrs. Herrick being recognized as the best authority on the history of the Indians in the Humboldt district, as well as on the general county history.”
With those kinds of accolades, it’s no surprise that Dolbeer and Wick picked out Herrick to run the Humboldt County exhibit, as items from local Native people were popular display pieces at the time due to the prevailing assumption that local native cultures were on the cusp of disappearing completely across the country. Humboldt County of course was a hard place to travel to and these expositions provided a glimpse (granted a biased one towards the settler perspective) into the culture and lifestyles of the area.
Herrick took up the job and with a full time assistant and part time assistant, constructed an exhibit in a 1300 foot space representing Humboldt County. Herrick wasn’t the only Humboldt County resident representing at the fair – A.W. Ericson was the fair’s official photographer.
A photo of the Humboldt County Exhibit courtesy of the Humboldt Room/Special Collections at Humboldt State University
The exhibit brought the Humboldt county ‘wilderness’ to the Chicago fair, filling the space with taxidermied animals, ferns and other living local plants, rocks, native artifacts and displays of foods from the area, including “vegetables of unusual size”. Herrick was also able to secure one of Seth Kinman’s presidential Elk Antler chairs, whalebone chair, and Kinman’s famous mule skull fiddle. Herrick received an award for her exhibit and remained in Chicago through the duration of the fair leading tours and giving lectures.
At the end of the fair, the money raised in the county had run out before Herrick had a chance to get her return ticket home, so she had to sell some of her collections she had brought with her to raise enough money. Some of the baskets sold because the base of the collection at the Field Museum. Herrick attempted to be reimbursed by the county for the money she had to spend to get back to Humboldt County, but the Supervisors denied her the money.
The 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition
In 1915, the World's Fair was hosted in San Francisco, under the title of the Panama Pacific International Exposition. The fair was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal and an opportunity for San Francisco to share their recovery from the devastating 1906 earthquake.
Humboldt County participated in a few different ways-
- There was a “Humboldt County Day” celebrating Humboldt County residents who descended on the fair en masse.
- Humboldt County also had an exhibit which included the redwood log that later became the Stump House and the Lentell Map which is now on display at the Clarke.
- A local Yurok woman trained as a nurse in San Francisco led the parade the opening day of the Exposition. Her name was Bertha Thompson and the article discussing her, penned by Emma Freeman, made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Humboldt County display contained images from Emma Freeman’s California Indian portrait series (which can be most easily found in Peter Palmquist’s With Natures Children), items representing Humboldt County’s incredibly diverse and plentiful agricultural industry, and images of the redwood forests. Souvenir books and pamphlets were also produced for these fairs lauding the natural, cultural, and industrial features of the area.
The following photos are glimpses into some of the booklets of images sold at the Exposition- cameras were not common features of the tourist outfit yet, so people purchased books, programs, and postcards to share views of the exposition with their friends and families back home. Click on the photos to view larger versions!
The Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939The 1939 fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition took place in San Francisco on Treasure Island, which was dramatically altered to host the event. This exposition celebrated the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge. A notable aspect of this exposition was that, according to one news story, a 364 foot tall redwood tree, noted as the world’s tallest tree, was brought to be put on exhibit in the Redwood Empire building, which housed the Humboldt County exhibit. Booklets from this event highlight that access to the "Redwood Empire" was easier than ever with the addition of the traffic-free Golden Gate Bridge. |  |
A promotional video for the World's Fair
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