Along with its rides and fun houses, vaudeville and musical performances, The Oaks featured many exhibits that were meant to be a mixture of education and entertainment.

Patrons of The Oaks could expect to be entertained with science exhibits such as the premature baby incubator exhibit in 1908. Before the Panama Canal was completed in 1914, patrons of The Oaks viewed a 150-foot model of the engineering marvel. Portland’s Washington Park Zoo was rivaled by The Oaks, which at various times housed ostriches, monkeys, bears, lions…even boa constrictors.

Many exhibits were anthropological in nature. The “Whang-Ho Pirate Chaser” exhibit is one example. Advertisements explained that the Chinese built this 110 year-old vessel to rid their waters of pirates. According to the ads, its various instruments of torture were “not only curiosities, but of great historical interest.”

In 1906, an exhibit featuring life-sized Japanese figurines made its world-debut at The Oaks. This attraction, which relayed the history of the Japanese Empire, next appeared in Virginia at the Jamestown Exposition the following year.

Like so many features of American amusement parks during the Progressive Era, these quasi-educational exhibits resembled those found on the midway sections of the many international exhibitions that swept the nation.

Cities hosted expositions to boast the resources of their regions and to proclaim their participation in the progress of the nation. It soon became evident, however, that the masses expected to be entertained. Rather than have to deal with unattractive and rowdy amusements that popped up just outside the grounds of early expositions, the planning committees of later fairs included a “midway” of amusements. This way, the planners maintained control over the character of entertainment that was available to visitors.

Exposition midways reflected the affluent classes’ preference for constructive and educational entertainment. However, those in charge of hiring the midway concessionaires made sure that the commercial amusements had something for everyone. Amusement entrepreneurs learned to disguise their entertainment under a scientific or anthropological cloak so that the concessions would appeal to the working class and middle class alike.

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