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The Utah State Flag and the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
More than 20 million visitors attended the 1904 world's fair officially titled the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The Fair boasted more than 75 miles of roads and 1,500 buildings. The Utah Building (lower right), at 60 feet square, was one of the Fair's smaller structures. Utah notables (top left), including Mormon Church president Joseph F. Smith, Constitutional Convention president John Henry Smith, US senator Reed Smoot, and Fair Commission members L.W. Shurtliff, Hoyt Sherman, S.T. Whitaker, Samuel Newhouse and Governor Heber Wells (chair of the Commission) came by train to St. Louis to officially dedicate the site for the building. The Salt Lake Tribune photo of the delegation taken in 1903 documents those individuals, along with other prominent Utahns, on the grounds of the Utah Building. The photo also shows one of the delegates, holding Utah's first state flag. That flag, featuring the state seal embroidered with white silk thread on blue silk, was lost to history for a generation until February of 2010 when Utah history buff Ronald Fox and State History curator Doug Misner discovered the unique flag in a mislabeled box. |