Fifty years ago, Washington State University had its own presence at Spokane’s world’s fair. The university drew a million-and-a-half people to the pavilion it called “Waterworld.” WSU students wearing red-and-blue polyester suits were among the hosts.
Today, John Ahlers leads his own law firm in Seattle. But in 1974, he was a WSU civil engineering student.
“Water and how water is used, how water is taken care of in our society was just starting to become a big issue that engineers were focusing on," Ahlers said.
In addition to his classwork, he was working in the university’s hydraulics lab.
“This laboratory studied water, everything about water. They did the fish ladders for the dams. They did wave studies," he said.
Ahlers’ professors brought him in to help build some of “Waterworld”’s exhibits. Then he hired on as its maintenance worker. The pavilion was created by academics, but designed to appeal to the average person.
“They had these jets set up so that when you walked in people would see this water doing something unusual. That was the eye-catching, the kind of the thing that brought the visitors in,” he said.
Once you got past the first display, you could sit for a short movie about watersheds. Then it was on to other exhibits.
“You could step on a scale and find out what your water weight was," he said.
There was also a very low-tech map of the United States that used colored plastic sticks to show how much precipitation fell in various regions.
Ahlers and several other WSU students, most from other degree programs, served as guides.
“It was such a great experience to be involved in this international exhibit where there were so many people from different countries. I remember Turkey. We got along particularly well with the Australians," he said.
Like the world’s fair, he says the WSU student group was also international.
“I remember there was a Japanese student that was part of it, so she spoke Japanese to the people that came in. There were Hispanic students, just a wide variety. I think I was the only engineer, but there were a lot of other people from various groups at WSU," he said. "We were very diverse even in those days, which was unusual."
There was another way in which the world’s fair — and WSU’s pavilion — were unusual. Both focused on environmental issues during the very early days of the modern environmental movement.
"A lot of the things that we were talking about they’re still talking about today. I mean, water is a big issue today and even much, much bigger today than it was then and, even then, it was, hey, we’re going to need water in the future and you’d better pay attention to this issue," he said.