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2011 Bronze Medal - Independent Publisher Book Awards/Great Lakes Region A walk down memory lane In the summers of 1936 and 1937 the Great Lakes Exposition was presented in Cleveland, Ohio, along the Lake Erie shore just north of the downtown business area. At the time, Cleveland was America's sixth largest city. The Exposition was scheduled to commemorate the centennial of Cleveland's incorporation and was conceived as a way to energize a city hit hard by the Great Depression. In its first summer the Exposition drew four million visitors and three million more during its second and final season. The main entrance of the Exposition was on the city's recently finished civic mall between St. Clair and Lakeside avenues, two of Cleveland's major thoroughfares.