We Washingtonians recognize how important our apples are to the world.

Back in the first decade of the 1900s a series of National Apple Shows were held across Washington…….

This photo was from the first-ever-held National Apple Show in 1908 in Spokane. The photo comes from our Washington State Digital PHOTOGRAPH collection……….. bet you didn’t remember that there were many, many older photos available via this website. (They were Charles Libby photos.)

Doing a Google search for “national apple show,” I found this newspaper quote (from the San Francisco Call ) for December 6 and 8, 1908:

“President Roosevelt will press a button at 10:30 tomorrow morning Pacific time which will give the signal for the formal opening of the National Apple Show to be held in Spokane December 7 to 12. The exhibits, ranging all the way from a single apple to carload lots will fill twenty thousand feet of floor space………… the exposition is the greatest and finest exhibition of apples, apple products, implements and machinery associated with the cultivation of the apple that has ever been assembled anywhere. The array is bewildering in magnitude and beauty.

“The bulk of the exhibits come from Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon but some are from western Canada and Luther Burbank sends an exhibit from California……….. there are exhibits from Japan, France and England, Norway, Germany and several U.S. states…….”

“One feature of the show is the presence of sixteen young women from the Domestic Science class at Washington State College in Pullman who will demonstrate the coking and serving of apples…. they have 56 ways of cooking this one fruit.”

Think about it; would YOU have been excited to go to an Expo all about apples?????