Advertisements | Flashback : Dallas

Snag Boat Dallas — 1893

Snag Boat Dallas of Dallas, Trinity River

by Paula Bosse

“Snagboat.” It’s a great word. And if you’ve taken even a glancing look into the history of the Trinity River, you’ve probably come across it. What is it? According to the Wikipedia entry, it is “a river boat, resembling a barge with superstructure for crew accommodations, and deck-mounted cranes and hoists for removing snags and other obstructions from rivers and other shallow waterways.” If you’re from Dallas, “shallow waterway” will immediately bring to mind our very own Trinity River, which, unless it’s flooding, you probably rarely even think of as being an actual river. But Dallas money-men have tried their damnedest for what seems like EVER to make the Trinity do what they wanted it to do.

In the late 19th century, a group of Dallas businessmen organized the Trinity River Navigation and Improvement Company and began to sink large sums of money into it. The goal was to make the Trinity navigable for large boats between the Gulf of Mexico and Dallas. They knew that if they could open this waterway to vessels carrying all manner of freight that they could make a lot of money. A lot.

In order to make the Trinity navigable, it first had to be cleared of all sorts of impassable debris in it, on it, over it, and along it. The stretch of the river around the soon-to-be inland port of Dallas was particularly snarled with all sorts of things making passage of large boats through its waters impossible. A snagboat was needed, and construction on the Snag Boat Dallas of Dallas began in November of 1892.

Dallas Morning News, Nov. 26, 1892

The construction of the boat was followed closely in the Texas papers, and giddy ads/editorials like this one were filling the pages of Dallas newspapers.

ad-water-rates_dmn_011593 DMN, Jan. 15, 1893

“Water rates” — charges for freight shipped via boat — were lower than the rates charged by railroads. Were the Trinity able to support freight traffic, this new competition would mean that railroads would lower their rates, and the savings for manufacturers and builders would be substantial. As a result, manufacturing and building in the city would boom, and before you knew it, Dallas would become “the greatest city ~~on Earth~~ in the South”!

A few days before the official launch of the boat, reporters, businessmen, and the public were invited to a preview. An interesting account in The Galveston Daily News described the boat’s machinery (which included a “liquid battering ram”) and took the reader on a tour of the crew’s quarters (which had separate sleeping and dining areas for black and white crew members, per the “Separate Coach Law” of 1891).

Galveston Daily News, Feb. 19, 1893

The boat began its snagging work in February, 1893, and, in order to keep readers abreast of all Snag Boat Dallas developments, there were almost daily updates on its progress in the newspapers, and (in lieu of photographs) Dallas Morning News illustrators provided scenes of the boat’s important work.

DMN, Feb. 12, 1893

DMN, Feb. 26, 1893

The celebrity snagboat succeeded in clearing the debris, and in May, 1893, the steamer H. A. Harvey, Jr. arrived in Dallas, having, yes, navigated the Trinity River from the Gulf, even though it had faced two months’ worth of difficulties along the way (problematic water levels, low bridges which had to be dismantled in order for it to pass under, underwater impediments which had to be dynamited into oblivion, etc.). When it finally pulled into Dallas — accompanied by the hard-working snagboat that had paved its way — the city shut down and had a massive celebration. The Dallas Morning News went so far as to print several of its pages in red ink (!). This proof that the Trinity River was, in fact, navigable, meant that the city was on the cusp on becoming “the greatest city in the South.” The DMN (which was not shy in its almost rabid boosterism of this project) published an editorial for those Dallasites who might “not fully comprehend” the significance of why they were celebrating.

DMN, May 22, 1893

Dallas would become an important inland port. “It can be done.”

Except that we know that it couldn’t be done. Too many other natural forces were working against the Trinity River entrepreneurs. The Harvey and the snagboat didn’t actually do much after that tumultuous reception in 1893. Sure, they moved some small loads back and forth along the Dallas stretch of the river, but that grand vision of taming the Trinity never came to pass. Even now, more than 120 years later, it still has yet to happen. Dallas has done pretty well without the Trinity River being truly navigable, but people can’t seem to stop trying to somehow monetize it. It’s probably time we just appreciated our little section of the Trinity River for what it is: a little trickle of a river that has (so far) survived everything we’ve tried to do to it in the name of “progress.”

For closure, snagboat fans: the hard-working little Dallas had an ignominious end. It was tied to an old pier and left to rot on the water before it was eventually cannibalized and slowly picked apart. Its end came in January of 1898 when it was finally “broken up.”

rip_dmn_052897 DMN, May 28, 1897

RIP, Snag Boat Dallas of Dallas — we hardly knew ye.

The Harvey (which quietly left town when it was sold to a Louisiana company in 1898) has gotten the lion’s share of the historical attention, but the snagboat is the one that did all the work. Here are two more photos of the Dallas and its crew taking a break from snagging to pose for posterity.

The photo below shows just what the crew of the snagboat was up against. The caption was written by C. A. Keating, president of the Trinity River Navigation Company.

And, finally, what prompted me to find out more about the snagboat in the first place: this ad for the Dallas Lithograph Company from the 1893 city directory. It featured an illustration of a little boat chugging along on the idyllic (and blissfully snag-free) Trinity River, with the Old Red Courthouse in the background and a little tent pitched on the bank. I wasn’t all that familiar with snagboats, but that’s what I thought it looked like. I’m sure it’s supposed to be something grander, but I’ll think of it as a snagboat anyway.

1893 Dallas directory

***

Sources & Notes

I came across the top photo (which is from the archives of the Dallas Public Library) on the web page for the 99% Invisible podcast, here. I was so enthralled with the pictures on this page that I didn’t even realize until just now that there was a podcast to listen to, called “The Port of Dallas” — about this very topic! Listen to it at the top of the page — it’s very entertaining. I think Julia Barton and I were separated at birth!

There are lots of other photos on that page, including a photo of the H. A. Harvey, Jr. and a photo showing what the Dallas Morning News looked like printed in red.

Second photo of the Snag Boat Dallas is from the DFW Urban Wildlife blog, here. More great photos there!

The final photo of the Dallas and the photo’s caption are from C. A. Keating’s autobiography, Keating and Forbes Families and Reminiscences of C. A. Keating (Dallas: self-published, 1920).

All other clippings, as noted.

To read about how people have tried and tried and tried over the years to make the Trinity River do what they wanted it to do — and failed — read the article “Navigating the Trinity, A Dream That Endured for 130 Years” by Jackie McElhaney (Legacies, Spring 1991), here.

UPDATE: I swear I was completely unaware of Julia Barton’s podcast about the “Port of Dallas” when I wrote this post, but I’m happy to report there is ALSO a video, from a presentation she did at the TEDxSMU talks in October. Watch it here. (Thanks, for alerting me to that this, Julia — my “internet twin”!)

7 Comments

November 2, 2015

The Dallas News Special: Fast Train to Denison — 1887

The Dallas Morning News, full speed ahead! (Belo Collection, SMU)

by Paula Bosse

In October 1885, The Galveston News decided to launch a sister publication in Dallas, The Dallas Morning News. They sent 26-year-old George Bannerman Dealey to run it. Before that first month was up, go-getter Dealey had made a special arrangement with the Texas & Pacific railroad — “at considerable expense to The News” — to extend its route and pop into Dallas to pick up papers destined for its subscribers west of the city. (The photo at the top may or may not show that very first “Special Mail train.”)

DMN, Oct. 27, 1885 (click for larger image)

A year and a half later, The News one-upped itself and made the announcement that it would operate a special train to Denison — again, “at a vast expense.” This train would transport editions of the paper in the wee small hours in order to assure that The Dallas Morning News would actually BE a morning newspaper for as many of its subscribers as possible, whether they lived “within a block of the press” or a hundred miles away (DMN, Sept. 30, 1888). News-hungry Denisonians could read their papers over breakfast at the same time their Dallas counterparts did.

DMN, May 22, 1887

The train was dubbed by some “The Comet” (not to be confused with the MKT’s later Katy Komet). It was a “fast train” that carried passengers as well as newspapers along the Houston and Texas Central rails.

ad-special-news-train_dmn_052287-det

DMN, May 22, 1887

Not only was this a clever way to extend its reach and expand its circulation, but, as the Handbook of Texas notes, it also “enabled the paper to meet the threat of the St. Louis newspapers, which in 1885 had a larger circulation in North Texas than did any state paper.”

A rousing account of the first Dallas-to-Denison run appeared in the pages of both The Dallas News and The Galveston News (which often shared content). A link to that full story is below, but here are a few passages from an article written the next year, touting the wondrous success of the News Special, written as only a nineteenth-century newspaperman could write it (and the writer might well have been G. B. Dealey himself).

First, one encounters a mention of Plano in a more grandiose combination of words than one might expect, as the writer describes his pleasant pre-dawn train trip along the route.

Plano was reached before the drowsy god of day had wiped his eyes at the first yawn. He rolled over in his couch by the time it reached McKinney, and he was sitting on the side of it when the train was at Melissa. And here the mocking birds, with no ruddier iris upon their breast, but moved with the spirit that makes the burnished dove mourn out his love, made the air resonant with their chatter and their songs. Into Sherman and Denison the train plunged and the trip was done.

Um, yes. Then he breaks it down in a little more specifically. Actually, a LOT more specifically.

It starts. Two minutes are consumed at the Missouri Pacific crossing five miles out, two minutes at Caruth’s, five minutes for water, two minutes at Richardson, two minutes at the Cotton Belt crossing, three minutes at Plano, two minutes at Allen, three minutes at McKinney, two minutes at Melissa, fifteen minutes at Anna for a meeting point, three minutes at Van Alstyne, two minutes at Howe, five minutes at Sherman. Total forty-eight minutes. The distance between Sherman and Dallas is sixty-four miles. The time card calls for two hours and five minutes from Dallas to that point. Forty-eight minutes is consumed in stoppages. Anyone can make the calculations, sixty-four miles in seventy-seven minutes, and see the terrific speed that this train makes, has made for over a year, and made it without a single accident, and it is a good road — an awful good road — to make it over.

And then he congratulates his employer on giving even its most distant readers “an even whack.”

Is there anything like this in the history of newspapers? True, some of them in the north run special trains on special occasions, but THE NEWS stands without a rival in this sustained work of giving its remote patrons an even whack with its people of the city. (–The Dallas Morning News, Sept. 30, 1888)

Below, a train identified as this H&TC News Special to Denison, even though it looks remarkably similar to the T&P train (in the photo above) which may or may not have been that earlier 1885 mail train to Fort Worth. Dealey is identified as the man in the light-colored suit, standing on the steps (he also resembles the man in the top photo, but now with a full beard).

The train would slow down as it neared a small-town depot, and, without stopping, a man would toss bundles of papers from the train into the waiting arms of another man on the platform, who would then divide them up and hand them off to men and boys on horseback who would race to deliver them to stores and homes before breakfast.

The Dallas Morning News ran its hot-off-the-presses newspapers up to Denison for several decades on this train until, presumably, cheaper trucks were pulled into action. But did the rather less romantic trucks, rattling up to Grayson County, inspire the mockingbirds to “[make] the air resonant with their chatter and their songs” as had the noble locomotive speeding the news through the night? I think not.

Dallas News offices, via DeGolyer Library, SMU

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo, titled “The Dallas Morning News special train,” is from the Belo Records, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; it can be viewed here. It’s a bit confusing, but this may show the inaugural run of the DMN’s special train to Fort Worth on May 22 ,1885, along the Texas & Pacific Railway. If anyone has suggestions on where this photo may have been taken, please let me know.

I came across a cropped version of the second photo in the March 1976 issue of Texas Historian, with the caption: “The Comet, Dallas News special train operated between Dallas and Denison in 1887. G. B. Dealey, then Dallas News business manager, stands on first car platform.” The version seen above is from the George A. McAfee photographs collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University here; it is titled ”The Dallas News Special (H&T.C.).”

If you’re into trains (and even if you’re not), you might enjoy reading the following three stories from The Dallas Morning News:

“Special Mail Service, Observations of a Staff Correspondent Along the Route” (DMN, Oct. 27, 1885), describing the new Fort Worth route and how The News convinced (i.e. paid) the Texas & Pacific Railway to include a stop in Dallas to load up on newspapers and haul them westward, can be read here.
“The News in North Texas, The Special Mail Train Service” (DMN, May 23, 1887), a rousingly written ride-along narrative, is here. (I would advise more fragile readers to skip to the next paragraph when they come across mention of a cute little calf — nineteenth-century journalism is not for the overly sensitive.)
“News Special Train, Between Dallas and Denison Before Day, Remarkable Record, But the Following Cheerful Narrative Tells the Whole Story, Extending Over Sixteen Months, Over Fifty Miles An Hour” (DMN, Sept. 30, 1888), another genuinely exciting and poetic account of the special train and its crew, again, probably written by Dealey, can be read here. The few sentences that are illegible at the bottom of the first column: “He rang it with jerks in town, he rang it clangingly at crossings, but away out in the solitudes of the country, softly and gently he would peal it slowly, as if he had quit; softly as if his head had dropped upon his bosom. Lyerly is promoted now. Lasher is on the regular passenger train, and R. R. Roe has beautifully and [evenly?] taken his place. But Gentry still sits upon his old seat on the right hand side and watches growing into beefhood the….”

9 Comments

October 26, 2015

The Terrill School — 1914

The Terrill School, 4217 Swiss Avenue

by Paula Bosse

The Terrill School was for many years THE top prep school for boys in Dallas. Founded in 1906, it was located at the corner of Swiss and Peak in Old East Dallas until a move to Ross Avenue in the early ’30s. After a series of mergers over a span of years, it eventually became St. Mark’s School of Texas. Below, an ad that appeared in the 1914 edition of The Texas Almanac. (Click for larger image.)

I’m never sure how accurate The Inflation Calculator is, but when those numbers are run through it, in today’s money, parents would be forking over $14,000 a year if their sons lived on the campus, or $3,500 a year if they were students who lived at home.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of successful businessmen and civic leaders spent time at the Terrill School. According to an eyebrow-raising account of life at Terrill — written by Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealey — those early days sounded more like a reform school than a prestigious prep school. One can only hope the practices he describes below did not last very long.

terrill_dealey_p28 from “Diaper Days of Dallas” by Ted Dealey (1966)

Seems to have turned Ted Dealey around!

***

Sources & Notes

Ad from the 1914 edition of The Texas Almanac.

The passage by Ted Dealey is from his (highly recommended!) book, Diaper Days of Dallas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), p. 28.

More photos and background on The Terrill School can be found in the post “George Cacas, The Terrill School’s Ice Cream Man — 1916,” here.

7 Comments

October 23, 2015

The Republic Bank Building and Spain’s “Casa de Los Picos”

Flour City Ornamental Iron Co. employees hard at work (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Did a 15th-century building in Spain inspire one of Dallas’ most distinctive and recognizable skyscrapers?

While reading about the construction of the Republic Bank Building, I came across the great, GREAT photo above which was part of an ad which ran about the time of the grand opening of the just-completed big, splashy Republic Bank Building in December, 1954. The ad this photo appeared in was for the Flour City Ornamental Iron Co. in Minnesota — the company that manufactured the thousands of pressed and embossed aluminum panels that covered the building’s exterior. These star-embossed panels — along with the distinctive and forever-cool “rocket” on the top of the building — gave the Dallas skyline a new super-modern look and an instantly recognizable landmark.

But back to that photo. It’s pretty cool. I had never really thought about those panels, but now I know that these iconic architectural adornments were manufactured in Minneapolis (…”New York CITY?!”) at the Flour City Ornamental Iron Co. Almost four thousand of these aluminum panels, a mere 1/8th of an inch thick (!), along with three thousand windows (which were reversible, so that the exterior sides could be washed from inside the building) were made in Flour City’s Minneapolis factory and transported to Dallas. From the ad:

The Flour City Ornamental Iron Company is proud to have been chosen to cooperate with the architects and builders of this project; to have made the dies for forming the wall panels on their great 750-ton hydropress; to have designed and built some three thousand unique reversible windows — both faces of which are washed from within with sash closed and locked — and to have erected the precision-formed panels, nearly four thousand in number, each in its proper position to form the weather-tight, heat and cold resistant aluminum covering for this notable building.

So, discovering that was interesting. But maybe even more interesting was this paragraph:

Although new in concept and especially in its techniques and use of materials, it is interesting to note that a sixteenth century [sic — it’s actually fifteenth century] prototype exists for this prismatic design of the pressed aluminum covering of this building. At Segovia, in central Spain, the Casa de Los Picos — literally ‘House of the Spikes’ — has each stone, above a point which would hazard passersby, cut to form a boldly projecting pyramid. The sparkling pattern of light and shade produced by this device is strikingly similar to the effect, especially on the enormous unbroken wall area of the Ervay Street side, which will be observed and admired here in Dallas for years to come.

I looked up Casa de Los Picos. It’s fantastic.

Casa de Los Picos, Segovia, Spain / via Trover.com

Was this design an homage of sorts to the Spanish building, conceived by the building’s main architects, Wallace K. Harrison and Max Abramovitz of the New York firm Harrison & Abramovitz? Or was it just Flour City exaggerating their work’s architectural significance? Whichever — I’m excited to have discovered Casa de Los Picos … because of an advertisement! I love this building — here it is again.

Wikimedia (click for gigantic image here)

And here’s an extreme close-up of the hometown favorite.

Wikimedia (see a fuller image image here)

You learn something new every day.

Here’s the original 1954 Flour City advertisement, broken into readable sections (click for larger images).

***

Sources & Notes

Wikipedia round-up:

Flour City Ornamental Iron Works Company, here
Casa de Los Picos (en Español), aqui
Harrison & Abramovitz, architects, here
Republic Bank Building, here

See a whole passel of photos of the exterior of Case de Los Picos, here.

Here’s something I stumbled across in the middle of stumbling across other things — a schematic of the aluminum panels — I don’t know if they are original architectural drawings or not. They are contained in the book Construction, Craft to Industry by Gyula Sebestyen (London: E & FN Spon, 1998); you can find it here.

I found surprisingly little information on Flour City’s contribution to the Republic Bank Building on the internet. Anyway, thanks, Minnesota, for playing such an important role in the construction of — and look of — one of my favorite Dallas buildings!

My previous post on this great building — “The Republic National Bank Building: Miles of Aluminum, Gold Leaf, and a Rocket” — is here.

When in doubt, click pictures for larger images.

8 Comments

October 22, 2015

Dallas Consolidated Electric Street Railway Co. Ad — 1902

by Paula Bosse

Why bother with a horse and buggy when you can take the streetcar?

streetcar_dce_worleys_1902-det1

(click me!)

streetcar_dce_worleys_1902-det2

***

D.C.E. St. Ry. Co. ad from the 1902 city directory.

Click for larger images.

1 Comment

October 14, 2015

“The Fair Is In the Air — Let’s Go!”

Look at this 1923 typeface!

by Paula Bosse

Here we are again in the final days of another State Fair of Texas. Why not take a look at a few random images of the fair over the years. (Click pictures for larger images.)

First, from 1900, the entrance to the fairgrounds. (It appears to be the same view as the top postcard seen in a previous post, here, just a few steps inside the archway.)

Fort Worth Public Library

A cartoon from The Dallas Morning News in 1912 — “The People’s University.” Remember, it’s not just about Ferris wheels and candy apples.

state-fair_dmn_102012-cartoon DMN, Oct. 20, 1912

1921. Don’t miss The Whip.

From the Texas Centennial in 1936, a shot of a remarkably spotless Midway. (Am I the only one who would have paid to see the “28-Ft. Monster” do battle with whatever freakish specimens were ensconced within the walls of the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not building?)

During World War II, no fair was held between 1942 and 1945. “Not until the boys come home, will there be another State Fair of Texas.”

By the ’50s, everything was back to normal. Big Tex had arrived, and this ad promises “She’s a LULU in ’52.” Martin & Lewis and whatever a Thrillcade was!

And, lastly, an aerial view of the Midway from 1966. Now this IS all Ferris wheels and candy apples. (To watch a short collection of color footage from the damp 1967 SFOT — including a sad, rainy parade downtown — click here.)

University of North Texas

***

Sources & Notes

1900 photo of the entrance to the fair is from The Bohemian magazine (1900) in the collection of the Fort Worth Public Library (those perforations in the photo are the FWPL’s).

1921 photo — I’m afraid I have no source on this one.

1936 postcard of the Centennial Midway is from eBay.

Patriotic WWII ad is from the 1945-1946 Texas Almanac.

Photo of the 1966 Midway is from the University of North Texas University Libraries blog, here.

My previous collection of SFOT photos over the decades appeared in the post “So Sorry Bill, But Albert Is Taking Me To The State Fair of Texas,” here.

Other Flashback Dallas posts on the State Fair of Texas are here; posts specifically on the Texas Centennial are here.

Again … some of these pictures are pretty dang big — when in doubt, click ’em!

6 Comments

October 13, 2015

“A City Built On the Solid Rock of Service” — 1927

“Opportunity!”

by Paula Bosse

Below, a 1927 Dallas Chamber of Commerce ad with some interesting statistics.

OPPORTUNITY

The CITY OF PROGRESS invites YOU to share in its PROSPERITY.

DALLAS–in 1900 a town of forty-thousand; in 1927 a city of a quarter million; forty-second in population; third as an agricultural implement distributing point; fifth as a dry goods market; fifteenth as a general jobbing center–the first city of the Southwest, in the fastest growing section of the United States.

Manufacturers, distributors and retailers are invited to investigate Dallas–a city built on the solid rock of service.

Pretty impressive. And the illustration of a dynamic city on the other side of that viaduct is all but throbbing with energy.

The illustration from a 1929 Chamber of Commerce ad is even less modest: it shows Dallas as the center of the universe, center stage on Planet Earth, lit up by the sun and the giant Klieg lights of space.

I kind of think Dallas has pretty much always seen itself like this.

***

Sources & Notes

Ads from the 1927 and 1929 editions of The Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide.

3 Comments

October 8, 2015

Dallas Fire Works Ad — 1891

ad-dallas-fireworks_1891-directory

by Paula Bosse

Even in the 1890s, Oak Cliff was encouraging people to buy local.

DALLAS FIRE WORKS
Manufacturer of
Fire Works of All Kinds.
Whistling Bombs and Rockets Also Exhibitions A Specialty.
Special Designs of any Kind Made to Order.
Send For Price Lists.
PATRONIZE AND PROTECT HOME INDUSTRY.
Take Oak Cliff and West Dallas Elevated R.R. to Factory.

Louis J. Witte, Manager.
P.O. Address Care Board of Trade.

Do NOT go to Fort Worth for your fireworks!

***

Ad from the 1891 city directory.

3 Comments

September 25, 2015

“Clean, Delightful, Refined” — The 1908 State Fair of Texas

Don’t miss the Katzenjammer Castle!

by Paula Bosse

As it’s State Fair of Texas time again and I’ve recently reposted the wonderful 1908 panoramic photo of a crowd-filled entrance to Fair Park (seen here), I thought I’d look to see what kinds of attractions that particular fair had to offer.

The 23rd State Fair of Texas was held from October 17 to November 1, 1908. Below are two ads that ran before the opening of the fair, the first one in The Dallas Morning News, the second in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The very wordy ad copy is similar in both, but they’re different enough to warrant taking a look at each one (click for larger images).

DMN, Oct. 15, 1908

An excerpt:

The very best features of every species of entertainment, from the Olympian games of old down to the creations and inventions of this year. Our permanent amusements represent an investment of $100,000. In addition to the Scenic Railway, Katzenjammer Castle [pictured at top], Hall of Mirth, Electric Theater, Figure Eight, Laughing Gallery, we have constructed this year the latest in the field of amusement and novelty – the ‘Tickler’ – the most laughable and fun-producing creation yet devised by man. Our Amusement Park an ensemble brilliantly spectacular and educational – a miniature Oriental City as it were. Here will be gathered a grand ethnological congress – Turks, Arabs, Cinghalese, Igorrotes, Bedouins, Turcomen, Japanese and Zulus – the strange peoples of the world, living as they do in their native lands.

Wow. The Hall of Mirth, the Tickler, and a “grand ethnological congress” — it had everything! But, wait — there’s more!

Here’s the ad for Fort Worth:

FWST, Oct. 16, 1908

And an excerpt:

Clean, Delightful, Refined

More than 100 new and superb shows constitute our amusement department. Permanent attractions alone represent an investment of $100,000. A grand aggregation of the latest and most ingenious attractions and revived sensations from all parts of the world. A cosmopolitan gathering of Oriental dancing girls, wrestlers, whirling dervishes, magicians, torture dancers, rough riders of the world, in a strange display of barbaric splendor. Marvelous free attractions, including the great Velaire, in his act “Beyond the Limit.”

Wonderful Exhibitions

Six acres of implement and vehicle displays. Three thousand birds in the poultry department. Over two thousand head of exhibition stock. Magnificent arena program. Agricultural and industrial growth of the state exemplified. Notable display of the handiwork of the women of the South in all departments of home life. Superb art display. Great dog show.

Martial Pyrotechnic Display Thrilling to Thousands.

Barbaric splendor, whirling dervishes, and a “great dog show.” And that mysterious “torture dance” (which I’m sure was “clean, delightful, and refined”).

Here’s one more ad promoting “Fort Worth Day,” which was held as “The Greatest Fair on Earth” was winding down:

FWST, Oct. 28, 1908

So, lots of interesting stuff was going on. But apparently the thing that people were most excited about was the horse racing (…and the wagering). Back then, people looked forward to the races with the same manic enthusiasm that people today look forward to the fried food. Racing aficionados were such a huge source of SFOT revenue that it seemed only fair they got a brand new grandstand that year.

DMN, Aug. 23, 1908

state-fair_grandstand_dmn_082308_text DMN, Aug. 23, 1908

There was also a new Grand Gateway at the main entrance to Fair Park, designed by one of Dallas’ most notable early architects, James Edward Flanders (read about him here).

DMN, May 22, 1908

DMN, Sept. 6, 1908

You can see it in this detail from the panoramic photo by Henry Clogenson mentioned earlier:

There was an exhibit of thousands of live bees in a mesh-enclosed apiary.

state-fair_bees_dmn_092908 DMN, Sept. 29, 1908

And fireworks. Gotta have fireworks. Somehow they managed to recreate a pyrotechnic display which simulated a Crash at Crush scenario of two locomotives colliding with each other head-on. I’m not quite sure how that worked, but it seems to have been effective. (I’m not a fireworks connoisseur, but this “set-list” is really great.)

DMN, Oct. 31, 1908

fireworks_trains-colliding_dmn_110108 DMN, Nov. 1, 1908

I have to say, I’m a big fan of the exhibit that was set up in the new Agricultural Building: three figures of women, each about seven feet tall, one made of rice (from Beaumont), one made of salt (from Grand Saline), and one made of coal (I’m going to guess from somewhere like Thurber),

state-fair_salt_lots-wife_dmn_092408 DMN, Sept. 24, 1908

That last sentence:

She will stand in the attitude of looking over her shoulder, and in the direction in which she is represented as looking will be placed paintings of the Cities of the Plain in flames, and the terrified inhabitants making desperate though vain attempts to escape the wrath which they have called down on their stiff necks.

How fun! (When I visited Grand Saline a few years ago, I saw a little cabin in the center of town purported to be made of salt. I was curious, and when no one was looking, I licked it. Yep. Salt. I’m sure I wasn’t the first to have done that, disgusting as it was. But I digress….)

Lastly, my favorite little throwaway factoid mentioned in one of the many endless articles that appeared in the weeks leading up to the opening of the fair was that the walkways were paved with “finely crushed pink granite.”

state-fair_pink-granite_dmn_092708 DMN, Sept. 27, 1908

I’d like to have seen that.

***

The photo at the top shows the Katzenjammer Castle, a popular attraction that had appeared the previous year and which sounds like the old German Funhouse (the thing *I* used to look forward to every year). The photo accompanied the ad that appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 15, 1908 (the first ad posted above). It looks as if it shows part of the Shoot the Chute water ride. (You can see several pictures of this ride, which was right next to that brand new grandstand, in a previous post “The Chute,” here.

2 Comments

September 20, 2015

Cadillac + Neiman-Marcus = “Practical” — 1956

Gowns and storefront by N-M, bumpers by Cadillac

by Paula Bosse

One need not be “prominent” to own a Cadillac or to shop at Neiman’s (… but it certainly helps).

***

Sources & Notes

Thanks to reader Kevin Smith for sending this to me!

Click ad to read text and to see those N-M gowns practically life-size.

4 Comments

Flashback : Dallas

Category: Advertisements

November 6, 2015

Snag Boat Dallas — 1893

Sources & Notes

November 2, 2015

The Dallas News Special: Fast Train to Denison — 1887

Sources & Notes

October 26, 2015

The Terrill School — 1914

Sources & Notes

October 23, 2015

The Republic Bank Building and Spain’s “Casa de Los Picos”

Sources & Notes

October 22, 2015

Dallas Consolidated Electric Street Railway Co. Ad — 1902

October 14, 2015

“The Fair Is In the Air — Let’s Go!”

Sources & Notes

October 13, 2015

“A City Built On the Solid Rock of Service” — 1927

Sources & Notes

October 8, 2015

Dallas Fire Works Ad — 1891

September 25, 2015

“Clean, Delightful, Refined” — The 1908 State Fair of Texas

September 20, 2015

Cadillac + Neiman-Marcus = “Practical” — 1956

Sources & Notes

Category: Advertisements

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this: