California Pacific Exposition
Amusement Zone, Balboa Park, 1935

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The Midway, or Zocalo, at the 1935 Exposition in Balboa Park ran roughly parallel to today's Park Blvd. north of Spanish Village into what is now the Zoo's parking lot. The selected clip shows some of the carnival rides.

Midget city, where more than a hundred "little people" worked and played, led other concessions in the number of visitors. Robert Ripley's "Believe It-Or-Not" offered Betty Williams, a young four-legged girl; Freda Pushnik, a girl without arms or legs, and Singlee, a man immune to fire. In "Sensations", undulating lights created illusions of beautiful women ascending and descending on jets of water while other women swam around them. A concessionaire showed gangster John Dillinger's bulletproofed and armed automobile, in "Crime Never Pays".

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