1915 Exhibitions

Source: Wikipedia. Panama-California Exhibition guidebook.

In June 1915, Anita Calneh Post and her mother Esther Suastegui Graham traveled to San Diego, the site of the Panama-California Exposition. This event was meant to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and highlight San Diego as the first port-of-call for ships traveling north. The San Diego event was competing with San Francisco's larger Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which Anita and Esther also attended in August 1915.

The exposition led to the creation of Balboa Park and eventually the San Diego Zoo. We saw this area in October 2009.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Balboa Park, 17 Oct 2009.

Arizona Daily Star, 19 Sep 1915.

The San Francisco exhibition was much larger, as it was recognized as a world's fair, and presented an opportunity for the city to promote its recovery from the devastating 1906 earthquake. Seeing Anita and Esther's visit to the Panama-Pacific exhibition reminded me of my Dad's visit to HemisFair '68 and my Gumpy's visit to the 1939 World's Fair.

Source: Wikipedia. 1915 exhibition booklet.