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?????

A regular column in The Spokesman  here in Spokane is “Jim Kershner’s This Day In History, from our archives 100 years ago.”  Jim gleans his bits from scouring the old newspapers from 100 years ago. Here is a bit he posted on 7 Sept 2015:

Dr. Henry Suzzallo, president of the University of Washington, told Spokane’s assembled teachers that the old-fashioned methods of teaching were no longer useful. “The old system of teaching a class by first saying ‘Position,’ (and having the student fold his hands on the desk, feet flat on the floor, sitting upright) has passed and now the pupil is allowed to remain in a comfortable position in which he will be best able to gather the most from the teacher’s remarks.”

He also advised teachers to “laugh and be merry” and not merely “put on a stern face.”

In 1915, Henry Suzzallo was appointed President of the university  and a new library building became one of his top priorities. Beginning in 1922, Suzzallo envisioned a library was was to be “the soul of the university.” The Suzzallo Library opened in 1926 (date of above photo).

Have you ever been to the Suzzallo Library to do research? I have not; I would enjoy hearing your story about this experience.

If you would enjoy some inside photos of this magnificent library, click to www.lib.washington.edu/suzzallo