Seven State Fairs Under One Roof
Montana beefs with Minnesota over the 1913 land show.
In a previous post, I mentioned Fred Whiteside, who opened an apple store at 422 Hennepin Avenue, where the Brass Rail is today. As it turns out, Fred Whiteside was a Montana senator who battled corruption, setting up a sting operation to expose a robber baron’s graft. Despite Whiteside’s efforts, William A. Clark, one of Montana’s “Copper Kings,” won an election anyway. Whiteside’s summation of the whole affair is despressingly reminiscent of today’s politics:
“I was mistaken in the belief that indisputable proof of bribery would prevent the election of Clark and stop further bribery,” Whiteside lamented. “About the only visible effect it had was to double the price they were obliged to pay for votes.”
Fred Whiteside came to Minnesota in 1912 to participate in the Northwestern Land Show, where he showcased the apples he grew in Kalispell, Montana. Every child who attended the show received “an apple check” that entitled them to a free apple from Whiteside’s display, where he’d arranged 200 boxes of apples into the shape of an American flag. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune called it “one of the wonders of the land show.”
“The senator’s generous distribution of fruit has made thousands of witnesses who can attest to the splendid flavor of these apples,” the Tribune reported.
When the land show was over, Whiteside set up shop on Hennepin Avenue and promised $1,000 to anyone who found a worm in one of his apples.
Northwestern Land Show
In the 1910s, several states formed the Northwestern Development League and created something that was a cross between a state fair and Zillow: the Northwestern Land Show, also known as the Northwestern Land Products Exhibition. The Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific were its sponsors, and one ad billed it as “Seven state fairs under one roof.”
In October 1911, the Glendive Ranger-Review reported that Northern Pacific had issued a booklet explaining the land show:
The purposes of the Northwestern Development League and the Northwestern Land Show are fully set forth, and in that connection the folder says:
"The First Great Exhibition of Land Products, exclusively of the Northwestern States, will be held in the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, December 12 to 23, 1911. It will be under the auspices of the newly formed Northwestern Development League, an organization having for its purpose to tell the world what we have, and by the telling to influence settlement and development of the rich commonwealths comprised in the League; that is, the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and also Alaska. The Land Products Exhibition in Saint Paul is one means adopted for carrying out the objects of the Northwestern Development League. It will be a show of the Northwest states, by the Northwest states, and for the Northwest states, and not to promote private or corporate interests."
The Minneapolis Journal reported in December 1911 that the land show had 36,000 paid visitors in its first five days, “the baked potatoes and baked apples will be distributed as long as they hold out, and there are thousands of them still left.”
The Alaska booth touted the territory as the “Scandinavia of America,” and featured a display of Alaskan bird life designed to “convince the people of the United States that the territory is not one of barren lands and icebergs.”
Visitors to Alaska’s booth also found “chairs made from moose horns, blankets made from fur by Indians, exhibits of fifty varieties of fur animals and collections of wood and products of the mills.”
Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Journal waxed poetic about Montana’s display:
“About as tasty a display of the products of Montana as could well be imagined has been assembled in the center aisle of the Land Show exhibit. The color scheme is green and gold, the fresh green alfalfa and the golden richness of the ripened grains being mingled. Bundles of oats, wheat, and flax are used on the framework of the big picture. Electric lights, shaded with upturned sheaves of oats, cast a flicker over beets, than which none redder grow, corn of the yellowest stripe, potatoes that tip the scale at four pounds, cabbages that almost burst, cauliflower that vies for beauty with the snowy caps of the mountains.”
Choirs, gymnasts and singing cowboys
Antler chairs and apples weren’t all that visitors to the land show could expect to see. Band concerts, choir performances and gymnasts on horseback were all part of the spectacle. Bill Pruitt, also known as Cowboy Caruso, drew crowds in downtown Minneapolis.
The Minneapolis Journal wrote, “The train that brought the western men was late. They came from the station, waddling as cowboys do, their ‘chaps’ and cowboy shirts making strange-looking clothes for musicians, but, when they let go before the Journal office on Fourth street, a crowd quickly assembled and they made a splendid impression.”
Get in loser, we’re buying land in the Judith Basin
All ad copy should be, “Have you seen this product? You will certainly be the loser if you don’t.”
Montana Governor favors change in 1913 land show
By 1912, some rumblings of dissatisfaction began to rise from League members. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune published this quote from Montana Governor Edwin L. Norris:
“It is scarcely fair to continue these shows to the Twin Cities any longer. There has been the disadvantage to Minnesota that the shows have been advertising the other six states away from their homes and Minnesota only at its own home, where its resources are, of course, known. The land show of northwestern products should go East where there are people who need opportunities to get homes. There is no such need in Minnesota. They should be seen in some of the great congested centers of the East.
"We want to get to the renters of the East," he said, "and bring them to the Northwest, where they can buy land at prices not greater than they now pay as annual rent. The work should be carried forward without giving any one state the advantage. Not to recognize that we of Montana have an advantage over Minnesota in a show given in the Twin Cities is palpably unfair."
But Minnesota felt that the league and the land show were organized to benefit western states like Montana at Minnesota’s expense. As to Montana’s “advantage” over Minnesota, the Tribune clapped back:
“Rail-road statistics show that Minnesota gets 51 per cent of the immigration to the Northwest, and so long as it has 20,000,000 acres of land to sell at $20 an acre it is going to continue to get 51 per cent of the people that come to the Northwest, no matter how much the states farther west may prate of their sunshine, flowers and rosy apples.”
Can you blame us? Just look at this yard of Minnesota turnips.
The Northwestern Land Show did eventually move out of Minnesota. The 1916 land show took place in Seattle, and it appears it stopped altogether after that. Two years later, Fred Whiteside’s tenure as a Montana state senator came to an end.
I especially enjoyed the connection with the apple guy, Fred Whiteside!
I'd never heard of this Northwestern Land Show. As I read this, I wondered if there was any connection with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition World's Fair, which was held in Seattle in 1909. I did used to read about this back when I lived in Seattle, and that this Land Show happened a few years later makes me wonder if there was a connection.
These states, of course, formed the northern border and also had a connection to the territory of Alaska, long before it became a state in 1959.
The only connection between these states and Alaska was by water, for the longest time, until the Alaska Highway began to be constructed (in World War 2, as I recall).