Posts Tagged ‘Panama California Exposition’

San Diego is now the automobile racing capital of America. For the brief space of one week the Southern California exposition city is to revel in all the glory of the speed game. Next Saturday America’s foremost drivers are to risk their lives . . . in one of the most unique motor races ever staged on the Pacific Coast.  –Los Angeles Times, Jan. 3, 1915

The story of the 1915 Exposition Road Race.

The fastest racers in the world making a turn on the dirt track at Point Loma.

 

All those old exposition buildings are nothing but fire traps.  I go to bed every night afraid that I will wake up in the morning to see the park buildings wiped out and with them collections of materials that could not be replaced for less than $1,000,000 [and] several years of hard work. –Joseph W. Sefton, Jr., president, Natural History Museum.

The story of a disaster in Balboa Park: the Civic Auditorium Fire.

The Civic Auditorium was the former Southern California Counties Building, built for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915.

Construction of the bridge began in December 1912 under the supervision of Frank P. Allen, Jr., the exposition’s Director of Works, using the designs of Thomas B. Hunter, a San Francisco engineer. Built for a cost of $225,154, the bridge was an innovative multiple-arched, cantilever structure and the first such bridge in California.

Read the history of this remarkable landmark, the Cabrillo Bridge.