For happening in the smallest city to ever host a world's fair, Spokane's Expo '74 sure had a lot of commemorative stuff.
Lapel pins, postcards, pennants, miniature spoons, decorative tea cups and saucers galore. Colorful plastic wallets, commemorative coins, salt and pepper shaker sets, flags, and ashtrays aplenty. Over 900 unique souvenir items were sold at a dozen stands across the fairgrounds, according to world's fair historian Bill Cotter.
Stop at any local antique or vintage store or hop online to eBay and you, too, can become the proud owner of a ceramic Jim Beam whiskey bottle in the shape of the Great Northern Clock Tower (its contents long gone) along with many other pieces of kitschy Expo '74-branded merchandise.
While some of the 50-year-old knickknacks are more easily found than others, collectors can thank one Spokane man for making sure plenty of the fair's souvenirs remain accessible decades later.
John R. Conley Sr., founder of Spokane's now-closed the White Elephant surplus stores, purchased the whole lot of leftover merchandise — more than 280,000 unsold units in total — for $28,000 in November 1974. There were enough boxes to fill a massive warehouse, plus a semi trailer. Considering the fair's environmental focus, it's fitting that none of this bulk ended up in the trash.
For decades after, those who attended the fair and maybe regretted not picking up a memento then, or folks simply seeking a piece of Spokane history for super cheap, the White Elephant's Expo '74 memorabilia corner was a reliable and affordable trove. Conley, who died in 2017, kept his prices low, too, with most items marked at a fraction of the original cost.
In her South Hill home, Mary Conley displays some of the Expo '74 memorabilia her late husband acquired alongside framed portraits of their large family. Behind a mauve velvet sofa in the living room is an especially rare lacquered wood wall hanging of Expo '74's Möbius strip logo by renowned artist John Pitre. This piece and a couple others like it were never sold as fair souvenirs, according to her daughters Maureen Smith and Therese O'Rourk, but the lot John Conley bought also came with some leftovers used for display or promotional purposes.
Mary recently celebrated her 95th birthday and says she's looking forward to visiting the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture's retrospective Expo '74 exhibit (learn more on page 52 of this Expo section), and the 50th Celebration kickoff at Riverfront Park on May 4.
"It means a lot," she says, to have helped preserve pieces of Expo's physical legacy. "I was born and raised in Spokane, and so was my dad. So it all means a great deal that we had a part of it."
"I know our dad talked about the worry he had after he made that investment, but he never saw it all as stuff," adds O'Rourk, the youngest of the Conley's 11 children.
"Some of our employees or our siblings would open boxes and be like, 'Oh, why do we have all this stuff?' He never saw it as a burden, he always just had so much joy and so much fun selling that stuff, and having it and finding new treasures, because even then you'd open a box and find something that you've never seen before," she continues. "And I know for me, because I was not even 3 during Expo, so all I knew growing up was all this stuff — it was just a part of our DNA."
The Conleys themselves spent many afternoons exploring the world's fair as season pass holders.
"I picked up the children after school, and we'd go over there," Mary says. "Probably every night for the fun of it."
Although the White Elephant, too, is now a relic of Spokane's past, the legacy of its Expo stash lives on.
After closing their two stores (on North Division Street and East Sprague Avenue in Spokane Valley) in 2020, the Conleys liquidated the meager remains of their once-massive Expo souvenir haul, passing it on to another local with an appreciation for regional history and kitsch.
Josh Morrisey has been collecting Expo '74 memorabilia and historical "old Spokane" ephemera for about a decade now. He met the Conleys while working on a project through his job as Spokane Parks & Recreation's marketing coordinator to place one of the White Elephant's mechanical elephant rides inside the Looff Carrousel's new building.
Many of Morrisey's Expo artifacts are displayed throughout his cubicle on the sixth floor of City Hall. A prized and hard-to-find piece of the collection is a plastic piggy bank shaped like the Clock Tower. He's also got a couple of small rectangular pieces of the Pavilion's original white roof with the Expo logo and "Authentic Piece of the U.S. Pavilion Roof" printed on the front.
"I get surprised all the time how much stuff there is, stuff that's like, 'Why did people want that?' Like a mini rake and shovel set that's like [6 inches] big," he says. "Or the hot dog holder. It's amazing the amount of stuff."
But Morrisey's not hoarding all that old White Elephant Expo swag for himself — he's also a vendor at Boo Radley's gift shop downtown where he stocks a small "Expo Zone" with glass trinket trays, flags, decals and more.
"If people have been to White Elephant in the last 10 years, they're probably familiar with it," he says of the stock he bought from the Conleys. "I'd say it's more quantity than variety, and some stuff I have thousands of, like the maps and official programs. I have hundreds of ashtrays. I have hundreds of the teacup-and-saucer sets. But I'm always keeping my eye out for stuff, whether it's on Craigslist or word of mouth or eBay, and I'm always putting one-off stuff in there just to keep it fresh."
The Conleys didn't liquidate their entire stash, though. A limited selection of Expo '74 goods are also still listed for sale via an online White Elephant storefront, whiteelephantstores.com, including that aforementioned Clock Tower-shaped whiskey decanter for $40.
"There's a lot of people who will say they got the last of it, but in the end no one will ever get the last of it," says O'Rourk, the youngest Conley daughter. "Dad would always say that to people to make them feel special."
"I wish dad was here. He'd be 97," her sister Smith adds. "He would be loving this, and as we were pulling stuff out — too much stuff — we thought, 'Well, this is what dad would do.'" ♦
