The fair ended on September 30, 1905, having entertained over two million visitors throughout the five months of operation at a total cost of five million dollars. Just as the fair committee intended, Portland's permanent population numbers are said to have grown immediately, and business picked up for merchants throughout the city. In December 1905, the Oregonian wrote in an emotional article on the aftermath to the Exposition, "...the Trail, the playground of the many nations in their lighter moods, is a ruin... The sole survivor of the "Dream City's" amusement is a friendless yellow dog loitering along the cosmopolitan thoroughfare where millions laughed and were happy, and who was fed by many hands before the lights went out. Now the deserted mongrel, hungry and sorrowful, haunts the empty, forsaken ruins where folly was, but where now desolation and hunger stalk."

The debate continued for some time over the future of the land that the exposition rested upon, as well as the future of Guild's Lake and the abandoned fair buildings. Portlanders, pleased with the financial and promotional success of the exposition, had a hard time saying good-bye. In February of 1906, more than three months after the gates to the Lewis and Clark Exposition closed, they were reopened for the public to take one last look at the empty fairgrounds. The Oregonian wrote that the attendance was nearly as large as during some days of the exposition itself.