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The sunny city of San Diego has launched a celebration of the 100th anniversary of a massive exposition honoring Panama the city hosted in 1915, which attracted controversy and the world’s attention.

The Panama-California Exposition was designed to spotlight the completion of the Panama Canal, and it ended up as one more example of Panama’s rich international history.

San Diego was eager to host the Expo, in order to make it clear that its port would be the biggest California recipient of the new wave of ships through the Canal. That didn’t sit well with much bigger San Francisco, which planned its own Expo to announce its status as the pre-eminent port for all that new traffic from Panama.

But San Diego refused to back down, even after President William Howard Taft and Congress made it clear they were supporting the San Francisco event. The Expo became a political issue, sending ripples across the country, with a variety of threats and counter-threats from the powerful figures of the day.

Eventually cooler heads prevailed and the Expo was deemed a success. Attendees at the opening included Secretary of State Williams Jennings Bryan, future President Franklin D. Roosevelt, formers Presidents Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, plus both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

San Diego is planning a variety of activities to celebrate the anniversary, centered on Balboa Park, the site of the expo. Many of the buildings in the park were built for the Expo, which why the buildings of the park look very little like the native California architecture

More information about the Expo can be found here.

Duncan McGowan is president of Punta Pacifica Realty, a Panama real estate agency focused on Punta Pacifica, the exclusive neighborhood of 18 towers perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.