Before I even opened this book I was aware of Gloria Nash’s childhood fascination with the 1964 World’s Fair, the family circumstances that brought her back to the neighborhood, and her visits to the old fairgrounds that ultimately led to creating Looking Back at the Future. I was not aware of a high school photography class assignment to “locate and photograph remnants of the fair” that had recently closed. A few black-and-white pictures taken at that time are included in this volume where she wraps up that assignment in style.

Of course, that’s not the only thing I was unaware of and learned here. One that seems like a biggy is that the 1939 and 1964 New York World’s Fairs were held at the same location and that the real goal was the creation of a park. The fairs were simply one of the means to that end. In terms of smaller details, the book’s ratio of new revelations to things I already knew is overwhelming. A short time ago, I knew essentially nothing about the 1939 fair, and about the only things I knew about the 1964 fair were that it was home to the iconic Unisphere and that the Ford Mustang was introduced there.

The book’s subtitle, “Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs”, accurately describes its main thrust. Well-written text provides background on both fairs, and there are descriptions of buildings and other items that no longer exist, but photographs of what that subtitle calls “leftovers” fill the bulk of the book. Most were taken by the author although a few come from other sources. Some images from postcards and other promotional materials are also used sparingly. The book is printed on good quality fairly heavy stock but it is not coated gloss stock. All of the modern photos are bright and clear and look quite good but this is not a “coffee table” book.

Nash has done a phenomenal job in tracking down fair remnants and makes sure that others can “locate and photograph” these leftovers, too. The location of all leftovers at the fair site (now Flushing Meadows Corona Park) is shown on a map with color coding to distinguish 1939 leftovers from 1964 leftovers. Both chapters on “On-Site Leftovers” contain what amounts to a tour guide for a walk that visits each of them. Chapters on “Off-Site Leftovers” describe locations and give addresses where appropriate. An appendix provides these locations in a list format.

Some of the leftovers from 1939 became leftovers only because they could not be shipped back to a Europe at war. Poland, which was invaded in September 1939, did not reopen its pavilion for the fair’s second season. Others could have made it home but did not. I was surprised to learn that four 25-foot-tall columns that were part of my home state’s building at the 1939 fair have survived and stand at the entrance of a cemetery in Cherry Hill, NJ.

It’s not surprising that more leftovers remain from 1964 than 1939 but it might be surprising that what is probably the oldest fair leftover is from the more recent fair. Jordan made a gift of a nearly 2000-year-old Roman column from the Temple of Artemis. It remains on site but was damaged by vandals in June of 2023. Nash includes a picture of the full column along with one of the damage and another with the damaged section removed for repair. At least a candidate for the second oldest leftover is a carousel made by combining parts of a 1903 and a 1908 carousel. Although it has been relocated, it remains in the park and operates seasonally.

Although both of these fairs made lasting impressions on the people who attended them. neither was a success from the organizers’ point of view. Organizers in 1939 hoped for 50 million visitors but got only 45 million. The target in 1964 was 70 million, but only 51 million showed up. I wasn’t around in 1939, and even though I was very much around in 1964 and well aware of the fair, I did not attend. I have only attended one world’s fair in my life, and that was in 1983 in Knoxville, TN. Nash says that was the last profitable world’s fair held in this country. Coincidence?

Looking Back at the Future: Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs, Gloria R Nash, N R G Press (November 30, 2024), 8 x 10 inches, 124 pages, ISBN 978-1940046006
Available through Amazon.

If you would like to learn more about this book directly from its author, give a listen to her visit on the December 22 episode of the Coffee With Jim podcast. I did.

I’ve been anticipating this book for a few years now. Henry was probably well into his research for the book when he gave a presentation at the 2017 Lincoln Highway Association conference on trekkers who had incorporated all or part of the highway in their travels. The Lincoln Highway and other trails aimed at automobiles appeared in the latter half of the golden age of trekking, which Trekking Across America focuses on. Henry identifies this as roughly 1890 to 1930. Merriam-Webster defines a trek as “an arduous journey” and during that period just about any long-distance journey that did not involve the railroad was unquestionably arduous. I ordered the book as soon as I became aware of its publication but my own non-arduous travels and the winter holidays kept me from reading and reviewing it until now.

There are a couple of motorcycle-powered treks among those that Henry documents as well as a few powered by beasts of burden that include a bull, some goats, and a team of sled dogs from Alaska. But the vast majority were powered by the trekkers themselves and typically by just walking. “Pedestrian mania” was an actual thing in the latter part of the nineteenth century with all sorts of walking competitions and exhibitions taking place and being reported on by newspapers and magazines.

A fellow named Edward Weston is credited with getting the walking craze started by walking from Boston to Washington to satisfy a bet made on the wrong guy (Stephen Douglas) in the 1860 presidential election. Apparently, Weston decided that he really liked walking and was quite good at it. He proceeded to set records and win awards into his seventies. In some circles, the rampant pedestrianism of the time was referred to as Westonianism.

Henry is a longtime postcard collector and tells how he first discovered trekking through a misfiled postcard of two boys attempting to skate from New York to San Francisco in 1910. Trekking and postcard collecting make a very good match for each other. Weston financed some of his travels by selling photos of himself, and most of those who came after did something similar. Some postcards are just about the only evidence of treks that did not get very far. Others are the entry to sources such as newspaper reports that flesh out the trek.

Postcards are also a rather natural way to provide a visual connection with a trek’s story. Henry divides these stories into five chapters based — not all that rigidly — on the reason for the trek. Following a chapter’s introduction are several segments featuring one or two specific treks with at least one related image. Postcards often provide those images. These two or three page standalone segments allow “Trekking Across America” to be read in small doses if desired.

Individual males were hardly the only ones undertaking these long arduous journeys. Buddies, siblings, newlyweds, whole families, and even a few lone women appear on these pages. Incidentally, little evidence is presented here that a trekking honeymoon will lead to marital bliss. The rules for some of the contests and challenges were also interesting. Virtually every trek involved some sort of time limit but rules about clothing, starting with little or no money, and working en route were also common. After the turn of the century, gimmicks such as the aforementioned skating or rolling a hoop might be involved. One fellow fiddled every step of the way as he walked from New York to Los Angeles and on to San Francisco.

Trekkers were certainly a diverse lot and even included some handicapped individuals such as a man with one leg, a man with one arm, and another with no arms. All three remind us of unpleasant facts about the past. The leg was lost by a four-year-old playing in a train yard. That possibly could happen today but it’s not very likely. The three arms were all lost in factory accidents. The worker who lost his left arm was nine. Both arms were lost by a worker just four years older, thirteen. The Child Labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act might have prevented both of those but it did not come along until 1938.

When I first opened Trekking Across America and scanned the table of contents, I noticed that the epilogue carried the title “When Highways Were Stages”. Although it seems really silly now, I connected that with the divisions or stages of a route followed by stagecoaches. On reaching the epilogue, it instantly became apparent that Henry was referring to Shakespearean stages and not Wells Fargo stages and it added a layer of insight for some aspects of the stories I had just read. The earliest trekkers, such as Edward Weston, were respected and celebrated. That changed when baseball overtook walking as the nation’s number-one spectator sport and suffered even more as the twentieth century overtook the nineteenth. Whereas most, if not all, of the prizes pursued by the first generation of professional pedestrians were legitimate, this became less and less the case. Evidence of this is in the frequent changes in prize amounts, completion deadlines, and other rules claimed by trekkers as they traveled.

But even as confidence in cover stories fell and the trekkers became sometimes viewed as freeloaders, they were still welcomed to towns along their routes, their postcards. were purchased, and their lectures attended. Because, Henry believes, they were a break from the routine and they were entertaining. In Trekking Across America, they still are.

Trekking Across America: An Up-Close Look at a Once-Popular Pastime, Lyell D. Henry Jr., University Of Iowa Press (October 30, 2024), 6 x 9 inches, 278 pages, ISBN 978-1609389796
Available through Amazon.