Frontier Fiesta 1955

About to Swirl 

Continuing the series with a photo from the University of Houston's 1955 Frontier Fiesta.

The Frontier Fiesta event was held in the late 1940's and 1950's and revived later. The early years were the heyday of the cancan in popular culture, and numerous sororities and other groups included cancan routines in shows they put on. Almost every booth in the show seemed to have a cancan or other saloon type dance going on.

A description of the event from one of the programs explains,

"On the seen-acre tract known as 'Fiesta City' replicas of famous saloons at the turn of the century seem to spring up overnight. The Silver Moon, Crow's Nest and others of the log cabin-pleasure palace variety are built by a student body intent on setting up the best building the quickest.

"Fraternities, clubs, sororities and other campus organizations all add their part to the western event. Campus waddies and cowgirls still attend classes, but the conversation outside classrooms is limited to various ways of phrasing, 'What are you doing for Fiesta?'''

You can see the originals at:

http://uhdigitallibrary.blogspot.com/ (the main page)

and this specific page for the photo above:

http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/p15195coll14/item/267/show/239

For an index to the programs see:

http://digital.lib.uh.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOBOX3=frontier+Fiesta+program&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOFIELD2=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOFIELD3=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOFIELD4=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOROOT=all&CISOOP1=all&CISOOP2=exact&CISOOP3=any&CISOOP4=none

All of the above are courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries, University of Houston Frontier Fiesta Collection. UH Digital Library. http://digital.lib.uh.edu/ (accessed March 18, 2014)

See also these prior postings:

http://classiccancan.blogspot.com/2013/03/frontier-fiesta.html

http://classiccancan.blogspot.com/2013/05/frontier-fiesta-postscript.html