50 years ago in Expo history: The fair was so impressive, it was getting nationwide publicity and even a free ‘commercial’

Newspapers around the country had been carrying stories about Expo ’74, and they were “overwhelmingly favorable,” the Expo press office said.

For instance, there was this from the New York Times: “The $83-million fair itself is an impressive chunk of environmental improvement. … Despite some soft points, the exposition promises to be one whose central motif breaks precedent by being more than just evanescent letterhead rhetoric.”

And this, from a Chicago Tribune columnist, writing about the old Trent Avenue railroad trestles: “Then miraculously, the City Fathers literally lowered the boom. Contractors moved in the demolition equipment. And today you wouldn’t know the place. … If this sounds like a commercial, it is. But it is a free one. And Spokane deserves it.”

Expo had received hundreds, if not thousands, of other news clippings, many from small-town papers. A few, unfortunately, had erroneous headlines about the “Seattle World’s Fair.”

But most had nothing but praise, singling out, in order, the Spokane River, the Russian Pavilion and the IMAX movies in the U.S. Pavilion.

From 100 years ago: Firefighters in Ferry County were fighting “one of the most furious battles ever” in the district.

A wildfire was “beating a slow but steady advance over a six-mile front” in the Shamokane Creek sector.

It was one of several fires raging in the region following a heat wave.