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The Sherwood Building and its Terracotta Gargoyles
This grand building, recently renamed from the Sherwood to the Cutter Building, is one of many Spokane landmarks designed by Kirtland Cutter. Famed architect Kirtland Kelsey Cutter moved to Spokane in…
Spokane Baseball Club is a Local Passion
Baseball was America's national pastime before Spokane was even a city. As the railroads moved across the west, Midwestern baseball promoter John Sloane Barnes moved to Spokane in 1890 to help…
Spokane's Other Indians, A Baseball Story: Avoiding Stereotypes, Building Bridges
Spokane's own professional baseball team has undergone a lot of changes since 1903!
Wallace District Mining Museum
Any exploration of the Silver Valley should include a stop at the Wallace District Mining Museum. The museum captures the flavor of the mining industry in Northern Idaho from the days of the early…
The House of The "Black Robes"
A home to generations of Jesuit missionaries
Kellogg: Center of Silver Valley: A Town Founded by a Donkey
The small town of Kellogg has a colorful history; from a mining boomtown to environmental cleanup and finally to a popular site for outdoor recreation.
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…
Cataldo Mission
Driving east along Idaho's Interstate 90, as you come around the bend at mile marker 38, a stunning view of the Old Mission opens up on your right. On a bright spring day, it can even look…
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…
The Northern Pacific Depot & the Compromise of Wallace
The Northern Pacific Railroad Depot stands as an elegant reminder of two stories. The first is the age of the railroads and their impact on the Silver Valley of Idaho. The second story is about…
The Log Cabin Church
The Pinehurst Community Bible Church, previously named the Pine Creek Baptist Church was built in 1932. The building was supposed to have clean and simple lines and logs. The church is an outstanding…
Saltese Cemetery
Saltese Cemetery is one of the oldest cemeteries in the valley. The name Saltese derives from the Coeur d'Alene Chief Andrew Seltice who sold this piece of land, known now as the Saltese Flats, to…
Mica Peak and Prohibition
Mica Peak today is a popular hiking spot with the entrance at Liberty Lake Regional Park. The very qualities that make it perfect for recreation today made it perfect for another activity nearly a…
The Apple Boom and Otis Orchards: Orchards and canals once dominated this area
Washington's commercial apple industry got its start in the Spokane Valley
Trentwood Kaiser Aluminum Rolling Plant
The economy of Washington is tightly connected to the vast hydroelectric development of the state. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government laid the framework for a series of…
The Death of Cromwell Dixon: A Daring Aviator Meets a Tragic End
Having just completed the first-ever flight over the Northern Rockies, 19-year-old Cromwell Dixon took a victory lap at the 1911 Spokane Interstate Fair. It would be his last flight.
US Highway 10
By the early 1900s, automobiles were more affordable than ever and the middle class clamored for new roads. US Highway 10 was known at different times as the Sunset Highway, The North Pacific Highway,…
Edgecliff Sanitarium: The White Plague in Spokane
Tuberculosis was the most devastating disease of the 19th and 20th centuries. Isolation was the most effective public health intervention.
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,…
The Many Facets of the Brown Building
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…
Vera Pump House No. 1
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…
The Cheney Lynchings: Mob violence or ethnic cleansing?
In the early 1880s two men were hanged without trial, one Chinese and the other a Spokane Indian.
The Courchaine House
[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…
Saltese School
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…
The Kentuck Trail
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…
1927 National Air Races at Felt's Field
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…
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…
Treaty Rock
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…
St. Joseph's Church & Cemetery
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…
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…