In 1903, David R. Francis, former mayor of St. Louis, former governor of Missouri, former US Secretary of the Interior, and then president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, had a couple of big problems. 

Under his leadership, the City of St. Louis was attempting to carry off the grandest world’s fair yet. It was set to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase land deal in which Thomas Jefferson bought from France the rights to be the conquering power in a gigantic territory that was inhabited already by quite a few indigenous people. It was a giant leap forward in the Get Really Friggin’ Big Destiny of the young United States. 

But it turns out that pulling off the largest world’s fair in history is something of a logistical challenge and the whole project had to be pushed to 1904. That still worked because the famous explorers Lewis and Clark didn’t set off into the Louisiana Territory until 1804, so with some minor fudging, that was good enough. 

Another big problem, however, was the fact that in 1901, the Olympic Committee in charge of determining the site of the third modern Olympic Games in 1904 had chosen Chicago. This would be the first Olympic Games on US soil and, though the Games didn’t yet garner nearly the attention they do today, it was still a world event that would compete directly with St. Louis’s moment in the spotlight.

The two cities already had a strong rivalry going because the proud, historic City of St. Louis, Gateway to the West, on the bank of the Mighty Mississippi River had been usurped as the preeminent western city by some swampy upstart village to its north that became important only because someone decided to dig a ditch from the Hudson Bay to the Great Lakes. Whatever.

Francis wasn’t about to let the swampy upstart ruin his fair which, in case anyone is keeping score, was more than double the size Chicago’s little exposition had been in 1893. He saw to the planning of numerous athletic events and even managed to contract with the Amateur Athletic Union to hold their 1904 track & field championship as part of the fair. Presented with the very real possibility that this could spell failure for the burgeoning tradition of Olympic world competition, the Olympic Committee begrudgingly agreed to move the Games to St. Louis.

Some Olympic historians have suggested that this was a blight on the history of the Games, but given that the whole concept of the Modern Olympics was still fairly new and in a bit of flux anyway, I’m not convinced that’s very fair. Yes, only twelve countries were represented and more than eighty percent of the athletes represented the United States. Yes, fair organizers tended to refer to every sport played on the fairgrounds as “Olympic,” which caused quite a bit of confusion. Yes, there was a deeply problematic “Anthropology Games” competition in which indigenous peoples were paid to compete in events in which they’d had almost no training in order to demonstrate the general superiority of western athleticism. And yes, the gold medal in the marathon was very nearly awarded to a man who’d completed much of the course in a car. 

But it was also the first Olympic Games in which gold, silver, and bronze medals were awarded to the top competitors, hurdler George Poage became the first Black athlete to win a spot on the Olympic podium, and competing with a wooden prosthetic leg, George Eyser won multiple medals in gymnastics. Also, there was not a single allusion to menage a trois in the opening ceremony. Nor was there an opening ceremony.

One could even argue that because the Games were part of this gigantic fair, which welcomed nearly 20 million people and became the only Victorian era fair to make a profit, this boosted the visibility of the Olympics, which were already a little bit of a hot mess with an uncertain future at this point. 

So yes, David R. Francis and the City of St. Louis were a little bit sneaky and underhanded and totally stole the Olympics from Chicago, which still hasn’t hosted the Games. The city does have a lot going for it, though. They have a river they’re fond of dying green every St. Patrick’s Day, an interesting cheese casserole dish they refer to as pizza, an alarming number of murders, and a somewhat irrational, now mostly friendly rivalry with a tiny little proud city to the south on the bank of the Mighty Mississippi.

Not bad for some swampy little upstart.