Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Program
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HistoryLink.org authors Alan J. Stein and Paula Becker will share photographs and stories
from their new book, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: Washington's First
World's Fair at 1:00p.m. on Sunday, October 4, 2009 at the Yakima Valley
Museum. Held on the University of Washington campus in 1909 and currently
celebrating its centennial, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition brought Seattle
and Washington State into the national spotlight. The 3.7 million visitors to
the fair during its 4 1/2-month run beheld a cornucopia of exhibits housed in an
astonishing collection of buildings, and enjoyed the carnival-like-and sometimes controversial-entertainments
of the Pay Streak midway. The A-Y-P Exposition was a major community effort for
a state that was then only 20 years old. It was the first world's fair to make a
profit, it provided a platform for advocates of women's suffrage, and it set the general
plan for the University of Washington campus that endures to this day. Alan J.
Stein is a HistoryLink.org staff historian,and is the award winning author of three previous HistoryLink books, Safe Passage: The Birth of Washington State Ferries,1951-2001; Bellevue Timeline: The Story of Washington's Leading Edge City from Homesteads to High Rises,1863-2003; and
The Olympic: The Story of Seattle's Landmark Hotel. He is past president
of the Association of King County Historical Organizations, and is Noble Grand
Humbug of Doc Maynard Chapter 54-40, E Clampus Vitus. Paula Becker is a staff
historian for HistoryLink.org, where her essays document the dance marathon
craze of the 1920s and1930s, war-effort knitting on the home front during World
Wars I and II, and the career of The Egg and I author Betty MacDonald, among
numerous other subjects. She contributed to the book Knitting America and
wrote the popular "Park Hopping" column for ParentMap magazine.
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To access our full Fall 2009 newsletter in PDF format, download it here.
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