author
Frank Wiggins
A tireless booster of early Los Angeles, this civic leader helped promote Southern California on a national stage through major exhibitions and detailed public reports. His surviving work offers a snapshot of how the city and state wanted to present themselves in the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
Report of Governor's Representatives for California at Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Commission
by California. Alaska-Yukon-Pacific exposition commission, J. A. (Joseph Adams) Filcher, Frank Wiggins
About the author
Born in Richmond, Indiana, on November 8, 1849, Frank Wiggins was educated in Quaker schools and later became a prominent figure in Los Angeles civic life. He joined the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in 1890 and became closely identified with the city’s push for growth, trade, and national visibility.
Wiggins is especially remembered for organizing and promoting California exhibits at major expositions, helping present the state’s agriculture, resources, and opportunities to wide audiences. The work available under his name today is largely historical and documentary, including official reports connected with California’s participation in expositions such as the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
He was not chiefly known as a literary author in the modern sense, but his writing remains useful for readers interested in California history, boosterism, and the civic imagination of the early twentieth century. He died in 1924, and his name lived on in Los Angeles through the Frank Wiggins Trade School, established in his honor.