In 1974, the little big town of Spokane, Wash., changed forever when the city cleaned up a blighted 100-acre area of downtown and used it to host the Expo '74 World's Fair. Then, in 1978—four short years after President Richard Nixon declared Expo '74 “officially open to all the citizens of the world,”—President Jimmy Carter dedicated the former fairgrounds as Spokane's new Riverfront Park.