Editing Jamestown Exposition (section)

==Opening day==
[[File:Jamestown Exposition (1907).webm|thumb|thumbtime=1:30|Newsreel footage from 1907, of [[Theodore Roosevelt]] at opening day and a later [[Georgia Day]] celebration]]
Opening day was April 26, 1907, exactly 300 years after [[Christopher Newport]] and his band of English colonists made their first landing in Virginia at the point where the southern shore of the [[Chesapeake Bay]] meets the Atlantic Ocean. They recorded giving thanks, planting a cross, and naming the location [[Cape Henry]]. Within the next few weeks, they found and explored the harbor now known as [[Hampton Roads]]. Sailing upriver on its biggest tributary, the [[James River (Virginia)|James River]], they eventually settled at what they would call Jamestown to begin their first settlement.

The first day of the Exposition had its share of difficulties. Only a fifth of the electric lights could be turned on, and the Warpath recreation area was far from ready. Construction of the government pier left much of the ground in the center of the exposition muddy soup. Of the thirty-eight principal buildings and works that the Exposition Company planned for the fair, only fourteen had been completed by opening day—the Fire Engine House and the Waterfront Board Walk were completed only in the last two days. The company failed to complete two planned buildings, the Historic Art and Education buildings, by the Exposition's end in late November.

Prominent visitors included President [[Theodore Roosevelt]], who opened the exposition and presided over the naval review. After the opening day, attendance dropped sharply and never again achieved projections. The Exposition Company had initially lobbied the federal government for $1,640,000 and received a loan for an additional million, to be repaid through a lien on 40% of the gate receipts. When crowds failed to appear in the anticipated numbers—the exposition was attracting an average of 13,000 visitors daily, only 7,400 of whom paid entrance—the company could repay only $140,000 of the million-dollar loan. The fair began attracting negative attention in the press as early as January before it opened, as a divisive split between planning committee members became public. The press who arrived for the opening day found the grounds unfinished, the hotels overpriced, and the transportation between the fair and nearby towns insufficient.