Five Million Apples and a Telegraph From Roosevelt
In December 1908, Spokane promised 80,000 square feet of fruit, international prizes and a presidential telegraph—all to crown itself the apple capital of the world.
Five million apples, representing every variety grown in the world and including the best products of 37 states in the Union, four provinces in Canada, England, Germany, France, Scotland, Wales, Denmark and Japan, have entered the various competitions for premiums amounting to $35,000 at the National Apple Show in Spokane, Dec. 7 to 12. The prizes range from $1,500 for the best car of standard commercial winter apples to $5 for a plate of five apples. There are also individual prizes of $1,000 and $500 and 14 orchard tracts of from two to ten acres of land, valued at from $750 to $2,500, with apple trees and perpetual water rights. Judges of national reputation in the United States and Canada will make the awards.
President Roosevelt, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the project, will open the exposition by telegraph from Washington, D.C., the morning of Dec. 7, when the factory, mill and locomotive whistles, bells on churches and schoolhouses, fire gongs, siren horns and all the noise-producing apparatus in Spokane will join in a five-minute demonstration at 10:30 o'clock. Banners and standards will be unfurled in various parts of the city and the flags of all nations will be hung to the breeze from staffs at Festival Hall, where apples have been gathered together from the four corners of the earth to compete for premiums.
Harry J. Neely, secretary and manager of the association, says more than 80,000 square feet of apples will be displayed in the state armory and adjoining temporary structures. Gov. Albert E. Mead, of Washington, and the executive officers of Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah and officials of British Columbia, Alberta and other provinces in Canada will be in attendance.
The country life commission, appointed by President Roosevelt, will meet here Dec. 5, and the Washington State Horticultural Association, of which H. M. Gilbert, of North Yakima, is president, will have sessions in Spokane Dec. 8 to 11. The country life commission consists of Prof. L. H. Bailey, of New York; Henry Wallace, of Iowa; Kenyon L. Butterfield, of Massachusetts; Walter H. Page, of North Carolina; Gifford Pinchot, chief of the United States Forest Service, and E. W. Allen, secretary.
Pomologists of international reputation will discuss subjects of world-wide interest, and there will be demonstrations by domestic science departments of the Washington and Oregon state colleges and other state institutions in the Pacific Northwest, also exhibitions of implements and apparatus used in orcharding. There will also be demonstrations touching every branch of the apple industry and displays of by-products, showing the various uses of the apple as a wholesome food and a healthful fruit. The railroads have made rates equal to less than one fare and a third for first-class round-trip tickets from all parts of the continent.
“Five million apples, representing every variety grown in the world ... have entered the various competitions for premiums amounting to $35,000.”
Spokane’s 1908 apple exposition was boosterism on a grand scale: a city using a crop to advertise itself to the nation. The impulse survives in every regional festival and “capital of” campaign, though the orchards that once justified it have largely given way to subdivisions and wine country.
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