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Picturing Seattle’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

In 1909, Seattle hosted the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a world’s fair that helped to establish the city as a new cultural and industrial hub. The fair had a wide range of exhibits, featuring a hearty nod to the Pacific Northwest’s connection to the Alaskan gold rush with an Eskimo village and a scale model of a coal mine. Other notable exhibits included a reenactment of a Civil War naval battle and the largest log cabin ever built.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the A-Y-P, Seattle is hosting many different centennial events throughout the year; one special treat is the Museum of History & Industry’s exhibit of the photographs of Frank H. Nowell, the official photographer of the A-Y-P. Nowell captured on film the construction of the fair, the various exhibits, and the events and celebrations held on the University of Washington’s campus throughout the summer of 1909.

Marquand recently produced Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a catalog of Nowell’s photographs of the fair, distributed by the University of Washington Press. Nowell’s images are also collected in an comprehensive database viewable through the University of Washington’s Digital Libraries, where you can browse through the other images that we sadly didn’t have space to include in the book, like this oddly charming bear made out of raisins. Luckily the slightly redundant giant lemon made out of lemons made the cut.

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