Happy Birthday, America! In honor of 250 years since 1776, the Ohio Commission for the U.S. Semi quincentennial (America 250) has chosen a different theme each month to highlight and celebrate Ohio’s rich history. Each month, The Dawes Arboretum’s History Team will be dropping a new collection to our archives that align with those themes. The August theme is Ohio Goes to the Fair: The Ohio State Fair, County Fairs & Festivals, read about Rufus Cutler Dawes and his relationship to Chicago World’s Fair.
The Chicago World’s Fair, also known as ‘A Century of Progress,’ was an international exposition held along Chicago’s lakefront from 1933-1934 to commemorate Chicago’s centennial. The fair’s motto was “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts.”
It highlighted science and technology in industry as well as art, literature and architecture. Beman Dawes brother, Rufus C. Dawes, was the president of the Board of Trustees for the 1933-1934 fair.
‘A Century of Progress’ was originally scheduled to run for one season, but it was extended to two when the fair’s popularity boasted 39 million attendees. It was hoped that the second season would generate enough revenue to pay off the debt of the first fair – and it worked.
This was the first time in American history that an international fair paid for itself. For this accomplishment, Rufus C. Dawes was acclaimed as “Chicago’s Most Outstanding Citizen.”
Less than a week after the fair’s last day, Rufus C. Dawes was embraced as the thirty third Tree Dedicator at The Dawes Arboretum. It was a Koster blue spruce tree that traveled from the fair and was replanted at The Arboretum.
His tree was dedicated on Nov. 4, 1934. During the dedication ceremony, he said, “A Century of Progress was intended to illustrate the benefits to humanity that have come from the application of science in industry, and it is fitting that I plant this tree to the memory of A Century of Progress in the soil of this arboretum which is established to demonstrate the necessity of applying science to the preservation of trees for the comforts of man.”
Although Rufus’ tree died in 1971, his legacy lived on when staff moved his Tree Dedication plaque to a Columan eastern white pine in 2011. Several photographs and letters have been digitized and are now available to the public.
To see these archival materials and more on the digital archive, click this link or go to the Advanced Search page and type out “America 250-Ohio” in Search Terms to view the entire collection. For questions concerning the digital archive, please email daweshistory@dawesarb.org
Are you interested in doing in-person research at The Arboretum? Do you have a history question that you can’t find the answer online? Don’t hesitate to use the Department’s History Research Request Form, where you can get answers to all your Dawes history-related questions and research requests.