Ice Cream @ 9: 2014-10-28 1904 World's Fair Site

Since we have a World's Fair in our fair city, Seattle, we love to visit other similar sites. Karen and I went to Expo 86 in Vancouver and the Spokane World's Fair in 1974 when they were running. Karen also went to the Fair in Seattle in 1962.

St. Louis had a World's Fair in 1904 to celebrate the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase. It was situated on the present-day site of Forest Park and Washington University.

It was here that we went to visit the Missouri History Museum, built in 1913 with the proceeds from the fair.

There were really three different exhibits that interested us that were housed there this month: 1904 The World's Fair Looking Back at Looking Forward, The Louisiana Purchase, and 250.

The Fair was HUGE. It was said that not even in 7 days could you see everything.

It was opulent. It was grand.

One building alone was over 20 acres in size.

Here is a model of the Observation Wheel.

Unusual items at the Fair included this postcard. The windows of the buildings were cut out with a knife and you would hold the card up to a light to see the image at night. This was to reinforce the importance of the new technology of the electric light.

Collections are nothing new. Buttons, spoons, and glass have been collected for hundreds of years.

And this was the Fair that brought popularity to the waffle ice cream cone, peanut butter, and cotton candy. Dr. Pepper and Puffed Wheat were foods that no one had previously seen before.

We spent so long looking at the WF stuff that we had to take a break and eat lunch. In the room next to the cafe was the Louisiana Purchase exhibit. There was more information on this than I'd ever seen before.

It must have really been interesting because I didn't take many pictures. What I remember reading were details on what England, France, and the US were doing at the time. There was background information on the participants that signed the document for the US.

Robert Livingston was the US Minister to France at the time and he was negotiating with them to purchase New Orleans. James Monroe was sent over as well and got all the credit for the Louisiana Purchase even though Livingston did the bulk of the work.

Livingston left politics soon afterwards and developed the first steamboat with Robert Fulton whom he had met in France. Who knew?

There were massive amounts of copies of actual documents and letters you could read from the purchase. The purchase price was $15 million but we actually paid $23 million over a 20 year period along with forgiving a debt of $4 million that the French owed us.

The last exhibit area was about St. Louis celebrating 250 years of the founding of the city. So they picked 50 each of people, places, images, moments, and objects to focus on.

This is just a sampling of what they chose. You could click on these same topics on a large touch screen monitor and you would get a video with more information.