On this date: Seattle World's Fair opens

For pretty much everyone on the west side of the Cascade Mountains, it's hard not to avoid the fact that today is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

I have a small, eclectic collection of Seattle World's Fair memorabilia, even though I wasn't born until five years after it originally opened.

What I do have is memories of the Seattle Center facility after the Exposition closed; the Bubbleator, a "futuristic" bubble shaped elevator, which remained for many years in the Food Circus/Center House; the now-defunct Fun Forest amusement park (called "the Gayway" during the Fair); and of course, the Space Needle.

To the left is the cover of a map of the fairgrounds that Standard Oil gave out. Standard Oil was among the exhibitors at the Fair; its building was smack-dab in front of the U.S. Science Pavilion, what we know these days as the Science Center. 

Below is the inside of the four-fold brochure, with a nice illustration of the Fair's layout. It's amazing how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same... but that's a topic for another day...