Alameda County Day at PPIE

If I had been around in 1915, I would have gone to the opening day of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. On February 20th, I would have been there, along with 255,000 of my closest friends.

Later I would have gone as often as I could, maybe every weekend, because there was so much to see in the Palaces and in the Zone. I would have stayed to see the lights and the airplane stunts at night.

And especially I would have gone on June 10th. That was Alameda County Day. I certainly would not have missed it. The Oakland Tribune ran advertisements for weeks telling me that Alameda County Day was coming.

Star Wars on the Harbor 1915 style

My hand-tinted photo of 1915 crane

I was looking through an Alameda County glossy brochure (1915) that might have been printed for PPIE (reference below). I was surprised to see this picture of an enormous lumber handling crane.

For years, there has been a rumor that the gigantic container cranes at the Port of Oakland were the inspiration for the Star Wars All-Terrain Armored-Transports (AT-ATs).

Mystery Date of Model T Photograph

In a book about the Washington Township, there is a photo of a long line of cars, Model T's and other cars. The cars are stopped along a long row of palm trees on the right and an irrigation ditch on the left. The book says the photo is ca. 1925.
But the last auto has two license plates (Mystery 1, why two?) and the license plate says 1914. What is the true date of the photo? Is it 1914, not 1925? What does it mean to have a 1914 license plate on a car?  (Mystery 2)

Why do I care about the date, you might wonder? Because in 1914 the California Nursery was supplying many of the trees and plants for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Perhaps this was a group related to PPIE.

PPIE scarves and computers

PPIE scarf

What souvenirs did PPIE visitors wear? I googled "PPIE scarf" and "PPIE scarves" and came up with several examples of scarves. Most of them were Jacquard or embroidered. I will look more closely at some pictures of the PPIE visitors to see if they have anything accenting their hot scratchy wool suits. By the time the Golden Gate Exposition came around in 1939, there were printed scarves - many very colorful artistic scarves. But as far as I have seen for 1915 PPIE, the scarves are just Jacquard and embroidery.

I shouldn't say "just Jacquard" because it is a very complicated design in that PPIE scarf - letters and a picture - formed only by which thread is up and which is down.  That is the same technology that led to punched cards for early computers. It's pretty fascinating and those of us, who are old enough, remember paper tape and punched cards. For years I kept my little roll of paper tape equivalent of my first "Hello World" program, probably finally tossed it.

Floating that state building

San Francisco Public Library

This is one of the best pictures! A tugboat towing the Ohio State building!

After the exposition closed, most of the buildings were torn down. A few lucky PPIE buildings had lives beyond the exposition and were moved to new locations. The Hoo-Hoo House was moved to Cupertino. One of the buildings of the Japanese Pavilion was moved to Ardenwood. The Ohio State Building was moved to San Mateo.

PPIE Exhibits for California's Counties

I have run across quite a few county souvenir books and I am gathering them here. So far I have about ten of them. I'd especially like to find Alameda and the rest of the counties. The San Joaquin counties may have one combined.

I think it was fourth grade when we had to do reports on California counties. I think I picked Alpine county. Because of this connection in my mind with fourth grade, I'm putting the National Education Association and and Internation Congress of Education booklet here. It's actually a very good booklet with lots of information on the various exhibits within the palaces.

Sheet Music of PPIE

When I learned about google searching using site:edu from a librarian at Santa Cruz, different results popped up for me. I ended up one day at the Fresno State website in the midst of a huge PPIE collection. As I paged through their collection, I came across some sheet music for PPIE.  And then some more. And more. They provided a summary of all the "Sheet music in the Larson Collection". This collection has sheet music for various world fairs. So search for Panama to find PPIE.

Jesse Cook's Scrapbooks of San Francisco

L. to R. Police Photographers Geo. Blum and Det. Serg. A. Jewel
examining a finger print camera. Mar. 1922

Somehow I ended up in this scrapbook with over 4000 images: Jesse Brown Cook Scrapbooks Documenting San Francisco History and Law Enforcement, ca. 1895-1936.  And I am glad I landed there. What an incredible span of years. Jesse B. Cook as part of the police force had a different viewpoint of the happenings in San Francisco. His scrapbooks cover such interesting things as the 1906 earthquake, the documentation of high pressure first system, finger print cameras, mug shots of the famous and not so famous, many photos of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition from different viewpoints than ones I've seen. Here are some of my favorites:

Poetic dentists and colorful PPIE

The Story of the Exposition was written by Frank Morton Todd (FMT), the man with three first names or maybe three last names. Sometimes I can't even remember which name comes first. But I love these books! They are chock full of information about PPIE.

It was in The Story of the Exposition, where I originally found the time frame of when the palms for the Avenue of the Palms were boxed and then shipped over from the California Nursery ("Niles") to SF. This has helped me find the right shipping records.

Originally, I only knew about the google books scan for FMT's book and could only find 2 volumes. The other three are at the local library, but searching electronically is essential.

Searching for Oakland Train History

I am looking for information about the Oakland Western Pacific Mole to find some good pictures in the 1912-1915 era. I figured that there is a museum up in Oakland who might be able to point me to the right place to look.

The Oakland History Room in the Oakland Library seemed like a good place to start. I could get side-tracked easily by those Oakland panoramas that are now on display, but instead I see there is "Electronic databases". From there, I filter for history and get these good looking sources: