Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1895-03-27
THE WHITE CITY.
Tour Through the Wreckage OF
the Exposition.
THE sQUALOR AND GRADUAL DECAY.
Storms and Fires Have Done Their Work
and Little Is Left of the En-
chanted Region.

Visitors to the Worlds Fair il 1893
brought away vision OF the Whlte
City as it lay under summer sun III
the enchanted realm of Jackson Park.
But the dream city has been slowly |
fading away. Fires have wasted 1t
and storms have swept it and ice has
encrusted it, and the ruins lie squalid
and melancholy, exposed to the SHOWS
of heaven and the gales from off Lake
Michigan.
A Chicago correspondent of the Gin
cinnati Enquirer has made what he
calls doleful tour of inspection, and
this is the result: "Taking swift
bird s-eye sweep of the once imposing
and busy empire, you embrace about
six hundred acres at glance. OF
these, about five hundred are wreck
age, and the balance, at the extreme
north, intact, minus the collection of
State structures-all but one removed.
Flames cleared away the middle and
south. Skeletons and debris, in all
this region, are relieved only by the
Rabida, ON it's lake front spit of land,
the desolate white goddess weeping
over wind-swept lagoon and silent
ruins, and attended in her regal misery
by the loyal obelisk, the Neptune col
umn and few devoted dumb beasts in
plaster.
But the Midway? What has become
of that distracting "Plaisance?" That
beautiful. bewildered crazy quilt of
Irish castles, drak-eyed houris. pratt
cal sandwich shops. Mckinley tariff
booths, painted freaks, gauzy bipeds
and performing quadrupeds?
Stand in the middle of the road
way, just outside the grounds, and look
north. In the gathering dusk you can
see a stretch Of broken prairie, pierced
by ditch heaped with dirt to either
side. few big beams, and squad OF
bloused workmen, shovels in hand, who
might pose for the wooden shoed con-
stituents of the painter, Miilet. They
are prosaically digging waterway to
connect with the lake these hirelings
right through the heart of the old
Plaisance, and no structures appear, no
volleys of merriment thunder to right
or to left of them. All desolation and
prairie. And that's the Midway?
Stiffen your courage and start on a
tour of inspection at the extreme south
ern end. Here is a mammoth iron
skeleton. Its colossal ribs and Orders
and columns bare as bone and all in
contortions. Grim and black and
heshless it stands there, the winter
wind whistling through it's framework
and starting dust eddies among the
thirty acres of wreckage that litter the
ground.
That is the ghost of Machinery Hall.
It's monster body was cremated, leaving
only the iron bones, in the big fire of
last July. And what are these other
acres of ashes AMI scrap iron and
charred timbers that lie about in such
wild profusion? Well. it was cur
ious wind that blew that day, tickle
as April, and greedy, too. The flames
began in the Mines and Mining struc-
ture, over to the left
After eating that up they leaped to
the big Administration building, near
by, and converted that into an insight
ly ash heap. Then the wind suddenly
veered and the flames jumped the
lagoon and lighted ON the big Agrioul-
tural Hall and the machinery edifice.
They seethed and sizzled and blazed
in turn, going with the speed of match
boxes. statues tumbling into the roar
ing sea below them, and in few hours
the entire south end was wreck. And
all the time this was going ON the
grounds were black with Chicago's
mourning thousands. who moaned and
grieved over the awful bereavement.
Turning to the left you cross a made
wagonway over the lagoon to the
north, and to your right see few
charred pilings gazing grimly out of
the lake waters-all that remains to
tell the tale of the stately peristyle,
with its majestic columns and arches
and figure crowned crest. Another
ocean of gnarled debris lies around on
every side, relieved only by the white
walls of the little Rabida. whose
Spanish outlines loom up in disconso-
Law soiiouuo vi tHo piolhoutoiy.
A most pathetic picture is our Lady
of the Republic, colossal white queen
of this once gorgeous and busy realm.
She stands in solemn and majestic state
ON her footstool at the head of the
lagoon. her right arm raised with the
same imperial grandeur as before,
though she reigns now over ruined
empire of dust and wreckage, and
few faithful, submissive subjects that
escaped the consuming foe-an obelisk
here. a Neptune column there, and
dismal coterie of sacred plaster COWS
that guard an ice covered lagoon. By
the way of affectionate travesty. they've
lately touched the old goddess up with
fresh coat of paint, so she stands
cleaning in white splendor like ray
of sunshine ON tomb.
Working your way northward along