Fair looks back 100 years

Strolling down the lanes of the 2001 Spokane Interstate Fair, it's not hard to imagine the fair as it was 100 years ago when it was new.

It's just that what was on display as cutting-edge technology a century ago is now exhibited by the Inland Empire Steam and Gas Buffs.

Dealers at the first fair might well have hawked the kind of 6- foot-tall steam engine Spokane resident Norm Warren was showing off Friday. The engine drove a long shaft, from which revolving belts, powered a variety of tools.

"It would have been quite a thing to have it before there was electricity," Warren said. "Anything you put an electric motor on today, it could have been used for that."

Next to the old equipment was a field of new tractors and an army of salesmen ready to explain the benefits of the latest model - much as it must have been a century ago.

In 1901, the fair's theme was"Forward to Success." Then Fair Board member O.L. Rankin hailed the annual fair as "a source of trade for our merchants and a standing advertisement for the resources of the Northwest."

Apples were big in those days. Tons of them, from communities as far as Missoula and Wenatchee, were polished up and displayed in endless racks.

Today's fair is more diverse, from the country-western stylings of "Gene the Singing Machine" to Andean folk music by a band called Quichua Mashis.

Still, the fair may not have changed so much in a century as the people who attend it. At the turn of the century, fairgoers dressed as though they were going to the opera.

At Friday's opening of this year's 10-day fair, magician Arthur Atsma may have been the best-dressed person on the grounds with his black vest and bowler hat. Everyone else was comfortable.

A hundred years ago, men wore suits and distinguished hats - fedoras mostly. Women wore long skirts, tailored jackets and splendid hats. Hats with acres of room for cut flowers, hats big enough to shade a woman and all her children.

Perhaps these specimens of sartorial splendor were brought in especially for publicity photos. Or perhaps the fair was expensive in those days.

In any event, if more people attend the fair now, it may be due in part to the fact that today's hats take up less room.

This is a good year to attend the fair for people with an interest in history, as the fair is celebrating one of its several centennials. It marks the 100th anniversary of the assassination of President William McKinley, who presided over the Spanish-American War and opened the door to China - a door that Richard Nixon later re-opened.

McKinley was memorialized during the 1901 fair, but the show went on.

Those unfortunate enough to miss this year's centennial extravaganza won't have to wait as long as they might have expected for the next centennial. There's another one coming up in 2052.

Former Fair Board member Diane Nebel shed some light on this in little booklet she prepared in 1992, a couple of years before one of the fair's earlier centennials. It seems the fair really got started in 1894 as the Spokane Fruit Fair - if you don't count the one the Washington State Fair Association put on in 1886.

The Spokane Fruit Fair became the Spokane Industrial Exposition in 1899, a heady time when technology promised unbridled progress in the dawning millennium. But the fairgrounds moved in 1901, and the name was changed to Spokane Interstate Fair. According to the stamps on official publicity photos, the Interstate Fair was already celebrating its 17th anniversary in 1910. The food booths that year, including the Sparrow Lunch Counter and the Inland Tea & Coffee Co., looked much the same as they do now. Today, much of the best food is sold at booths operated by local nonprofit organizations. A salmon sandwich meal was the most popular item at the Spokane Valley Kiwanis booth. It always is.

"People come back year after year for our salmon," Stephen Aspinwall said.

And he's discovered over the years that, if he gets a chance to list what drinks are available, good old-fashioned lemonade is what people really want - even though they inevitably ask for a Coke if they don't hear that lemonade is available.

The concession stands in the early 1900s were at the outer edge of a grand pavilion with a pennant at its soaring peak and pennants atop each of its many gables. One entire booth was devoted to cigars and tobacco.

Technically, that incarnation of the Spokane Interstate Fair ended in 1930 after the stock market crashed.

Spokane slogged through the Great Depression without a fair, but a Spokane Valley-County Fair was established in 1941. That fair became the Spokane County Fair in 1944 and the Spokane Interstate Fair in 1952.

Copyright 2001 Cowles Publishing Company
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