AtD pg. 1

[Tim Strzechowski]

Well, the Ferris Wheel was still incomplete on Opening Day, according to Eric Larson's _The Devil in the White City_, which was why first-day admissions receipts for the fair were lower than expected.  The Wheel was barely assembled and few guests in the early months knew what the strange contraption being constructed on the Midway was supposed to be ... so ticket sales remained low until the Ferris Wheel was finished and given it's first official spin (with paying passengers) on Wednesday, June 21, 1893 (Larson, p. 279).  He notes that

"had the Exposition company stood by its original June 1892 consession rather than waiting until nearly six months later, the wheel would have been ready for the fair's May 1 opening.  not only did the exposition lose its 50 percent share of the wheel's revenue for those fifty-one days -- it lost the boost in overall admission that the wheel likely would have generated and that Burnham so desperately wanted.  Instead it had stood for that month and a half as a vivid advertisement of the fair's incomplete condition" (280).

Larson points out that it was the Wheel that was the financial saving grace for the Fair, since word spread rapidly of the attraction and ticket sales for the fair shot up immediately after and thru the October closing date.

So ... since the first page of ATD makes reference to "the great Ferris Wheel" (suggesting its mythic proportions by this time), I'd say it's probably around mid-summer at the earliest that our novel begins.


    Since the Columbian Exposition had "recently opened" (1), one might infer that it's May, 1893.  
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