By David Smollar

There was nothing subtle in promotion brochures enticing Americans to venture west for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which opened Jan. 1, 1915, in Balboa Park.

“At least in a thousand ways, it is the greatest of expositions, because it is so original in its conception and execution, so absolutely unique and so different from all other like enterprises that have been heretofore attempted,” began the purple prose of the exposition’s official guide.

The promoters promised an unmatched story of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans to rival the history and mythology of Europe and Asia.

“Know you that in the last decade discoverers have learned a vast amount concerning the mighty races of red men who went out of existence centuries ago; that explorers for the Smithsonian Institute and the School of American Archaeology and the San Diego Exposition have uncovered ancient cities and brought to the Exposition for first exhibit the priceless relics they found?”

No boredom was possible at the San Diego extravaganza, promoters continued. With industrial exhibits, a staple of world fairs in the early 20th century, “a new idea has been carried out whereby there is an effort to make each exhibit interesting … not a carpet, but the making of a carpet, not a utensil, but the making of that utensil, so that products which are seen every day, and in themselves are not particularly interesting, are made interesting by study of how they are made.”

Even the agricultural displays were trumpeted with a twist to promote a popular back-to-the-land movement at the time.

“The model [farm] bungalow? Well, that is for the wife of the prospective farmer, who feels that the problem of keeping the boy on the farm is no more serious than keeping the girl on the farm. That potential farm-wife is going to see that just as machinery has cut down the labors of the farmer of a generation or two ago, so it has removed the drudgery which fell to the lot of the old-time farm-wife.”

Of course, would-be visitors would be looking for more than simply intellectual stimulation in undertaking a major rail or motor trip to the nation’s southwest corner. So the exposition touted the Isthmus, a carnival-like midway that paralleled today’s walkway between the Natural History Museum and Roosevelt Middle School.

“A mile of clean, genuine entertainment … San Diego claims the best amusement street in the history of world’s fairs!”

And lest visitors fear a run on their pocketbooks while on exposition grounds, there was a promise that the many restaurants along the Isthmus would have prices controlled by the authorities, “whereby extortion is prevented.”

Not just the exposition was painted in glowing terms. Travel brochures held nothing back as well in their depictions of San Diego itself as nature’s ultimate paradise.

“An all-the-year Exposition, with doors and windows thrown wide, and most of it all in the open, were possible nowhere in America except in California,” marveled promoters. “And nowhere in California were it so ideally possible as in San Diego, where January is the same as June, where summer never dies, where skies are always blue.”

The Balboa Park site “is where myriad flowers and shrubs and trees are forever in bloom and blossom — a hill of 250 acres that looks down on sea and shore and the sunny waters of the sunniest of harbors that stretch to the tumbling seas … a spot ravishing in its beauty.”

With such unparalleled attributes, San Diego “is now, as it must forever be, the first port of America at which ships will call as they cleave the continents with buoyant sails from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

Not to be outdone, the County Board of Supervisors issued its own publicity efforts, touting the climate as unquestionably the best in the nation: “It may have its equal in the world, but no superior.”

Supervisors extolled San Diego as “a city of homes and a sportsman’s paradise.” The beaches were incomparable. The backcountry mountain areas were equaled only by Yosemite National Park. The library was among the nation’s finest. The city had more automobiles in proportion to its population (80,000) than any other city in America. The politicians predicted that two transcontinental railroads would soon terminate in the city, and that San Diego was destined to become “the future New York of the Pacific Coast.”

Tourists thoroughly tempted at this point were given the additional nudge of special rail fares for 1915.

Between Chicago and San Diego, round-trip tickets on the Santa Fe or Southern Pacific routes were set at $62.50 in coach ($1442 in 2015 dollars. Amtrak round-trip fares today begin at $412). The cheapest sleeping berth would run an additional $5.60 round-trip ($129 in 2015 dollars. Amtrak’s cheapest round-trip room berth now starts at $1524). For an additional $30 ($692 in 2015 dollars), a traveler could make a circle route from Chicago to San Diego, then to Los Angeles, San Francisco (with its Panama-Pacific International Exposition), Portland, Seattle, and back to Chicago.

The Santa Fe Railway recommended accommodations at The US Grant hotel with its “reinforced concrete and steel construction,” at rates of $1.50 to $4.50 per night ($34.60 to $103.60 in 2015 dollars. Actual rates today begin at $199 per night.) The US Grant was one of 76 hotels sanctioned by the Exposition itself for promotion to visitors — “all signing contracts to maintain normal rates during 1915, averting extortion common in previous world’s fairs.”

Eight of these hotel buildings still exist today, and four — the Grant, the New Southern, the Sanford and the Golden West — have the same name as a century ago. The Wilsonia, at 1545 2nd Avenue, the Keystone at 10th and Broadway, and the Carnegie, on 9th between Broadway and C, are now apartments. The Polhemus, on C near 7th, is today the C Street Inn.

In 1915, the Golden West was the cheapest, with rates from 75 cents to $1.25 ($17.32 to $28.84 in 2015 dollars). The poshest rooms were to be found at the Sanford for $6 ($138.84) and at the Barbara Worth, “a hotel for your wife, your mother, your sister, and yourself,” on the Horton Plaza side of today’s Westfield Mall, where a suite with two rooms and bath would set a visitor back $7 ($161.51 in 2015 dollars).

While most out-of-town visitors would come by rail, the exposition made arrangements for the growing popularity of the automobile, and especially for members of various motor club organizations around the country to receive gasoline and repairs at shops strategically located along a southwesterly route from Kansas City, roughly paralleling what later became U.S. Route 66 a decade later.

As if anticipating a future bete-noir about Balboa Park, the fair arranged parking for 3,500 vehicles at both north and south exposition entrances. “Checkers will furnish the owner with a ticket in exchange for which, later, the car will be returned with the necessary attentions in the way of oil, water, gasoline and minor repairs. Uniformed guards will protect the contents of the cars from pilfering.”

For exposition and San Diego officialdom, there was no doubt to be had in 1915: “By land or by sea, all roads lead to San Diego and the Exposition.”

To them, “The year 1915 is one of America travel,” given the four-month-old war in Europe. “San Diego is the loadstone.”

—Contact David Smollar at [email protected].