By Anna Harbine
Like any immigrant, settling in a new land, cultural connectivity and education were important to a thriving immigrant community. For many, churches were the center of immigrant communities.…

By Anna Harbine
On a warm August day, Japanese-American pacifist and civil rights activist Gordon Hirabayashi made headlines, marrying his college sweetheart, Esther Schmoe, in a simple Quaker ceremony at Spokane’s…

By Anna Harbine
Being Japanese in Hillyard was not always easy. Home to a large community of railroad workers of every nationality, conflicts between the Japanese and other laborers were frequent, sometimes resulting…

By Anna Harbine
In the first half of the twentieth century small Japanese farms peppered the outskirts of the city. The produce from their farms in Bigelow Gulch, Nine Mile Falls, Spokane Valley, and Latah Creek…

By Anna Harbine
Sumi Yoshida and Joe Okamoto thought that December 7, 1941 was supposed a day that would live forever—in celebration. It was on that day the Japanese-American couple planned their wedding at the…

By Robert M. Lambeth
You are looking at the very spot where the first ferry crossing over the Spokane River was located from 1854-1866. The area was once a well-known ford used by area tribes for generations, but in 1854…

By Robert M. Lambeth
Most Spokane-area residents are familiar with Liberty Lake near the Idaho-Washington border, but few are aware that there once existed an even larger lake only a few miles west of Liberty Lake.…

By Hannah Bancroft
[Private Residence] The Rosebush House is one of the best-preserved houses in Millwood. Built in 1923 by Waldo Rosebush, it is a prime example of the French Eclectic architectural style. It also…

By Kegan Hovda
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…

By Kegan Hovda
Among the earliest signs of white settlement in the Spokane Valley was the construction of churches and cemeteries, and St Joseph's Church & Cemetery is the earliest in the Spokane Valley. The…

By RaeAnn Anderson
In June of 1871 Chief Seltice of the Coeur d'Alene tribe and German settler Frederick Post, made a verbal agreement. Post was granted 200 acres of native land to build a sawmill. As a part of the…

By Thomas Kassa
The 1920's heralded a gripping intrigue in aviation amongst Americans. With new, dangerous demonstrations in flight occurring each year, by 1927 aviators were becoming as popular and idealized as a…

By Thomas Kassa
The first white settlers in the Spokane Valley arrived in the 1860s by a series of pioneer trails coming up from the Snake River Country to the south. Among the most important of these was the Kentuck…

By Jessica L Bell
Built in 1893, Saltese School began as a simple log building built on land owned by early pioneer Daniel Courchaine. Grades one through eight were educated in this one-room schoolhouse. Most of the…

By Jessica L Bell
[Private Residence] Greenacres was the place to be for pioneer Daniel Courchaine in 1867. Born in Quebec in the 1830s, Courchaine lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin for a time before heading west to…

By Kegan Hovda
In the early 1900s development of the Spokane Valley was driven by land speculators. With a modest investment into infrastructure and a far flung advertising campaign, small land management companies…

By Hannah Bancroft
This quaint building, known historically in the community as the "Brown Building," has a significant and interesting history in Millwood. The two-story commercial structure was built as a drugstore by…