The first appearance of Hale's Tours were at the 1904 St. Louis Exhibition. The idea was further refined under the name Pleasure Railway. The idea then appeared in New York and Chicago and spread throughout the United States and Canada with an estimated 500 Hale's Tours appearing between 1906 and 1911. In 1906 Wade C. Gifford took Hale's Tours throughout the world in Mexico, the British Isles, Continental Europe and Hong Kong.