J. William T. "Bill" Youngs, The Fair and the Falls: Spokane’s Expo ’74: Transforming an American Environment, Chapter Twenty   
                           "Fairgrounds after Expo" courtesy of the Washington State Archives

Chapter Twenty: The Final Tally

Summary

The fair finally came to an end on November 3, 1974. But as one speaker noted, Expo was also a new beginning. The previous six months had injected the city with new life and had left Spokane with an opera house and convention center, a riverside park, and a new confidence in itself.

Author reads from the Text

"Everything kind of went"

"Spokanites grieved when Expo finally closed. 'I cried when it was over,' said a woman on a radio talk show in Spokane twenty years later, 'and I'm still crying.' ... Steve Bell, who worked at the American Pavilion, remembered the end of the fair as 'really a sad time. I mean, a totally bummer time for most of the staff and people that worked there.' Janet Hoyt, who met her husband because of the fair, recalled, 'Everything kind of went when it was over. There just wasn't much to do. We twiddled our thumbs a lot.'"

"The feeling of community"

"Tanya Hainsworth came [close] to describing the essential character of the fair: 'You know, suddenly we weren't just this little dumb town, we were somebody, and they were talking about us in the news and stuff, but mainly it was just the feeling of community -- doing something together, and having it work.'"