Featured Stories: 66
Stories
Captain Mullan: The Bombastic Little Lieutenant
From an early age, John Mullan had big visions for his future. Born in 1830 in Maryland, Mullan graduated from St John’s College in 1847, and from West Point where he studied engineering. Soon his skills and military training were tested in the vast…
Spokane Valley Heritage Museum/Opportunity Township Hall
The Corbin Ditch
The main challenge for farming in the Spokane Valley was supplementing the meager local rain fall with manmade irrigation systems. Gravity ditches, such as the Corbin Ditch, formed the core of early efforts in this area. Developers understood that…
The Arrival of the Paper Mill at Woodard
Originally called Woodard, or Woodard Station, after the family who owned the land on either side of the tracks, the district that is now Millwood was a little railroad town. The arrival of the Inland Empire Paper Company in 1910, however, changed…
The Cheney Lynchings
This quiet street corner in Cheney was once the scene of two brutal murders.
From 1881 until 1886, the frontier village of Cheney was also the seat of government for Spokane County. A wooden, two-story courthouse and plank jailhouse were the sum…
Spokane University
During the boom years of early Spokane, colleges and academic institutions began to pop up around the city. Spokane University was among the first universities in Spokane and the first in the valley, but it would not survive for long.
Founded in…
Working Women of the Silver Valley
Not all the wealth of Wallace came from the mines. Some came from bedrooms of the working women of the brothels like the Oasis or the Bi-Metallic. As the miners extracted the ore from the ground, the second wave of workers arrived to mine the wages…
The Ghost Town of Burke
Nestled in a cramped canyon seven miles from historic Wallace, are the decaying remnants of the once-booming mining town that was built to house the miners of the Hecla, Hercules, Tiger-Poorman, and Bunker Hill mines. Burke was "all length and…
Indian Congress
After hundreds of years of American oppression, American Indians gained the right to vote in the land they called home since time immemorial with the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Native Americans, new to the political scene worked…
Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House
[Note: This location is a private residence, not open to the public.]
This Spokane home has a Hollywood pedigree. It was built to promote the 1948 film, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Seventy-three similar Blandings homes were built across…
Spokane's Trolley Cars
The steel rails that still peek through the pavement here and there in Spokane remind us of the days of trolley cars. At one time, the tracks that lay before you carried Spokanites to work, shops, restaurants, and leisure. Residents even had a safe…
Camas on the Plateau
Every spring, many of the meadows of the eastern Washington and northern Idaho are dotted with the blue flowers of the camas plant, cammasia quamash. To the Native peoples of the Columbia Plateau these flowers indicated food, marking the nutritious…
Violet Noble, Resident Since the 1940s
"We didn't like the things they did and they didn't like the things we did."
Born in Meridian, Mississippi in 1927, Violet Noble came to the East Central neighborhood during the growth period of the 1940s. This was also a time…
Taft: The Wickedest City in America
By the early 1900s, the rough and tumble frontier towns of America were dying off, slowly becoming gentrified and developed into respectable settlements. Taft, Montana was one town that wasn't going to go down quietly. Home to pimps, prostitutes…
"The Big Blowup:" The 1910 Fires and their Aftermath
The summer of 1910 was hot and dry in the northwestern United States. And on August 20-21 the nation would feel the fury and reach of nature's wrath.
Fires on the scale of 1910's were not unheard of at this time. In 1825, upwards of 3.5…
The Great Fire of 1889
When the territory of Washington became a state in 1889, the city of Spokane Falls was one of its largest and most successful cities. Attracting wealthy businessmen who had stakes in the nearby Idaho mines, Spokane Falls was a thriving young city…
The Washington Cracker Company
The Washington Cracker Company building, which still stands at the corner of Bernard and Pacific Streets, is one of the most visible reminders of Spokane's foray into the industrial world. Its high visibility is due in part to the painted…
Hutton Building
When Levi and May Arkwright Hutton struck silver ore in 1901 at the Hercules Mine, the couple's lives dramatically changed. Both from humble beginnings, the pair met while working on railroad in Idaho. Upon striking it rich, the two moved to…
Hutton Settlement
Life as an orphan out on the western frontier was full of hardships. Without parents, orphans bounced around from distant relative to distant relative. It was a lonely life for most, who were often treated like servants in the homes they occupied.…
Felts Field
Felts Field is not only the oldest airport in the Spokane area but is also one of the oldest federally designated airstrips in the country.
Located near Rutter and Fancher and along the banks of the Spokane River, Felts Field was originally…
The Fox Theater
The Great Crash in December 1929 left a lasting impact on the American economy--and on Spokane. Plans by Fox West Coast Studios to build a theater had been part of Spokane gossip since 1927. The million dollar project began in 1930, early in the…
The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
In the 1920s, Episcopal Bishop Edward Makin Cross endeavored to create a successor to the All Saints Cathedral, which stood Downtown. He contracted the services of congregation member Harold C. Whitehouse. Whitehouse, a veteran architect…
Cheney Historical Museum
The Cheney Historical Museum traces its roots to the Tilicum Club. This women's social and service club was organized in Cheney in 1903. In 1935, during the club's annual Pioneer Tea, a group of early settlers asked the Tillicum Club to…
Sex Work in Early Spokane
This building once housed one of the many popular brothels in the city of Spokane. One young prostitute, by the name of Abbie Widner, worked in this location that was then known as The Colonial Hotel.
The Colonial was a three-story brick…
The Formidable May Hutton
In 1883, orphan May Arkwright moved to Idaho from Ohio where she worked as a saloon cook and opened up her own boarding house, where she quickly gained a reputation as the "best cook in the Coeur d'Alenes". In 1887 she met Levi…
Frontier Justice at Fort George Wright
It was the night of August 14th 1916 and Edward F. Mayberry was on the run. Three witnesses had seen Mayberry murder 35 year old Native American woman Alice Vivian on the Colville Reservation near Keller, Washington. The heavily armed young man…
Barracks and Buffaloes
The 24th Infantry regiment contained the famous all-black "Buffalo Soldiers" who had fought bravely in the capture of San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War. The regiment had endured many hardships. Only 24 of the 456 men of the…
snyamncut: EWU's New Residence Hall
On this spot, bordered by Eleventh and Cedar Streets, stands Eastern Washington University's newest residence hall, snyamncut. This location used to serve as a parking lot for residents of Streeter, Morrison, and Louis Anderson Halls, but on…
Washington State Archives, Digital Archives
Opening in 2004, the Washington State Archives Building was created to house both the Eastern Washington Regional Archives and both state and local government Digital Archives. It was the first archives building to be built from the ground up that…
Theodore Roosevelt on the Parade Grounds
You are standing where Teddy Roosevelt stood on April 8th 1911, reviewing the 500 heroic African-American troops of the 25th Infantry as they passed in review. The 25th Infantry had served with Roosevelt in the Spanish American War, and had been…