WorcesterThen: 1909

Excursion to the Exposition: the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in Seattle, 1909

This group of a little over one hundred people of Worcester posed for a photograph before boarding the train for a three-week, seven thousand-mile tour of the northern route across the United States and through Colorado on the return trip.  Organized by the Board of Trade to “sell Worcester” along the way, the trip was also to give travelers an opportunity to see and enjoy some of the middle and western sections of the country, including some of the most spectacular scenery of the Rocky Mountains and the great northwest.  It probably was the longest and most extravagant trip ever taken by most of these people, although some no doubt had sailed to Europe or the British isles.

Source: Worcester Magazine, September, 1909

Might there be some long-time Worcester residents who have ancestors in this group? This photo (which is of a photo in the magazine) is not of high photographic quality, but it is of high enough resolution that if downloaded and viewed with zooming capabilities it should be a good-enough look at most of the travelers to see if anyone resembles someone in an old family photograph.

To help gain an appreciation for the sea of faces, try counting the straw hats, the big hats on the ladies, or the smiles on people’s faces.  Of the latter, there are a few, even though cameras at the time apparently were seen as things to frown at.  There are a lot of young, single males in the picture – a good number of them probably being members of the Glee Club, of which, more to follow.

The train is a Boston & Maine special, set to leave the station on the northbound tracks, to pass through Lincoln Square, then roll out of the city to Holden, Princeton, and Hubbardston and on to Gardner. From there it would follow the old Fitchburg Railroad tracks across the northern tier of the state (along Route 2), through the Hoosac tunnel and on to Troy, NY where it would be picked up by the New York Central and carried westward. 

Behind the travelers stands the north side of the 1875 Union Station, with its Roman arches of stone blocks, and two single-track portals enabling trains to exit the station northbound. The not-so-old depot was nearing the end of its lifespan as the city’s principal railroad station. Two years later it would be reduced to the clock tower and the northside shed, and a view of the new Union Station being built across Grafton Street.

The trip.

Aside from the pleasures of vacation travel to see some of the greatest natural features of the country, the main goal of the trip for the Board of Trade delegation was to sell Worcester, and to make connections across the nation with potential partners in trade. They carried in the baggage car some 15,000 copies of a booklet entitled “The Heart of the Commonwealth,” extolling the virtues of the city and its industries (In case you thought that phrase was new.)  By the end of the trip they were all gone.

By evening of the first day, travelers were dining as the train passed through the Hudson and Mohawk regions of New York, and overnight they slept (or tried to) in the pullman “sleepers,” and morning found them in Detroit. There they spent the day being entertained by their local equivalents, one of the highlights of the day being a riverboat cruise on the Detroit River, separating the U.S. and Canada.  The next morning they arrived in Chicago, where the day was spent seeing the city by motorcars on the new boulevard system, and lunch was a grand affair in the “Gold Room” of the Auditorium Annex. 

Worcester Magazine, October, 1909, p. 297

At stops along the way, Board of Trade representatives passed out copies of the Worcester packet, letting  folks what they were missing by not living here – and, of course, where they should look to find business connections in the future.  And at most, if not all, of the stops, the Glee Club sang the popular tunes of the day.  (The Music Man comes to mind.)  

In Chicago the party had to change trains – from the New York Central to the Great Northern, which would take them to the northwest and back. 

Saturday, August 7, they visited and received hearty welcomes in Saint Paul and, later in the day,Minneapolis, before heading northwesterly toward Fargo, North Dakota. Sunday they stopped at Devil’s Island for relaxation after church services in the town, and then reboarded to trek across the state’s northern route into Montana.  Monday the party rolled through the magnificent landscapes of northwestern Montana which a year later would become Glacier National Park.

The Great Northern Railroad was a major participant in the establishment of the region as a place for visitors, financing the development of a series of “chalets” in the mountains, essentially hotels both posh and mildly rustic. The railroad also played a role in the settling of the lands of the region which had been known previously as “Indian lands.”  They also engaged in the folly of seeing and photographing authentic “Indians” posing for the visitors, for a fee of some kind, for sure. The picture below must speak for itself. The same goes for the Great Northern’s ad for settlers to take claim to “Indian land.” In the post-mortem of the trip in Worcester Magazine in October, the author noted that when they arrived in Spokane, thousands of people were leaving after having come for the  lottery for parcels of the land being allocated by the government. 

The party’s next stop featuring a reception was Spokane, where they spent the day being feted by local commercial dignitaries, then crossed the state, passing through the Cascades, and arrived in Seattle on Wednesday, a week after their departure from Worcester. Friday at the Expo was designated as “Worcester Day,” which doubtless was a major experience for all concerned, and a good time was had by all, according to Worcester Magazine, despite of the woes of the Glee Club.  It fell well short of the revenue goals it had for its eight performances at the fair, but we hope its members were able to enjoy the trip nevertheless.

Oddly, the Worcester Magazine stories responsible for the photographs of the trip failed to include any from the Seattle fair itself.

 A brief stop in the Cascades. Worcester Magazine, October, 1909.

The party left Seattle Monday, August 16, looking forward to a week of some of the most awe-inspiring scenic landscapes the United States has to offer. They left Seattle by steamboat down Puget Sound to Tacoma, then reboarded the train for the short run to Portland.  After being feted there, the train rolled eastward along the Columbia, then the Snake River, along the border of Oregon and Idaho, and into Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake. Then the train ran through Colorado from the west, passing through Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, and Vail, then turning south to cross the continental divide and descend through Leadville and the Royal Gorge on the way to Colorado Springs and Pike’s Peak, and then to Denver for a two-day rest.

A few problems were reported on the trip home. The “imbedded” Gazette reporter, who had a flair for the corny, wrote after the trip that after leaving Portland “the hard luck Johnnie jumped aboard the cars and he remained on the job till the train reached home.”  (Too bad they don’t write ‘em like that anymore.) Johnnie apparently was responsible for delays caused by a freight train accident and by a washout at Royal Gorge due to heavy rains, and also for an attempted train robbery which was foiled (not clarified in the press). Johnnie wasn’t finished yet.

The party left Denver Sunday night at midnight, arrived in Chicago Tuesday where they changed to a New York Central train which departed Chicago mid-day. Early Wednesday morning, the last day of the trip, a few miles west of Syracuse, a fire broke out in the dining car. For reason unknown, the train sped toward Syracuse at a breathtaking 60 miles per hour, according to the Gazette reporter, who said a lot of the passengers had never gone that fast before. No one was hurt but everyone missed breakfast and the dining car needed major reconstruction. The reporter then re-stated his theme: “these were tricks pulled off by that hard-luck merchant (Johnnie) just to show he was on the job.” 

They came into Worcester on a high note, as far as the Gazette was concerned. The fire put the excursion story at the top of the front page. And with a dazzling set of headlines!

The group arriving in Worcester that evening was considerably smaller than the one that had departed three weeks earlier. About a third of the party had broken off at various places on the return trip to continue traveling on their own, mostly to California.

In general, it sounds like a trip the participants would never forget. In the overview of the trip in Worcester Magazine it was said that the group was planning a re-union the next Summer. For its time the trip was quite a piece of traveling: 7,027 miles in 22 days, with lots of great scenery viewed, lots of quality hotels and good meals and speeches by the Babbits of all the cities visited. But the Glee Club lost money.

Sources: Worcester Magazine, September, 1909, pp. 247-248 (the itinerary of the trip before departure), and October, 1909, pp. 295-299 (the post-mortem); the Worcester Evening Gazette, August 4, 25, and 26, 1909.

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Don Chamberlayne, 2017