Opening Day of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
San Francisco, February 20, 1915
Excerpts from The Story of the Exposition
Frank Morton Todd
Vol. 2, pages 262-273
When
plans were announced for opening day there was much misgiving. The management
was raising a mob. The mob would be like all mobs, uncontrollable.
It was the opinion of the best-informed editors of the city that the mob would
go out there and tear down the gates, property would be destroyed and people
might be killed.
But
it was an idea with a big appeal... San Franciscans were a self-disciplined
people, their behavior during the great fire showed that and the management felt
it could rely on it. It was determined to turn out the whole city.
Marshall
Hale, chairman of arrangements, went before clubs and organizations throughout
the city and told them:
"We
are going out there on the morning of February 20 to open OUR Exposition.
We want everybody. We shall walk... no carriages, no automobiles, everybody on
foot without distinction, led by our Mayor; just the people of San Francisco.
When
you hear the big noise at six o'clock on the morning of February 20, turn out,
come down onto Van Ness Avenue south of Broadway, and into the streets on both
sides, for the great work will have been completed and the years of waiting will
be over, and it will be the hour for San Francisco to enter into is own."
Thomas F. Boyle undertook the chairmanship of the Noise Committee. He arranged to have every bell and whistle in the Fire Department in operation at six in the morning of the 20th, every automobile horn at work, and every policeman near a trolley line banging on a hollow iron trolley pole with his club.
The neighborhoods of the hospitals were to be the only places that should know peace and quiet that morning.
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It will be remembered that one hundred thousand badges had been sold at fifty cents each. They were to be worn in this voluntary procession and would entitle the wearer to enter the grounds... the badge would be a souvenir of San Francisco's greatest day.