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Float Homes of Bayview: Floating homes, Lake Pend Oreille
The "Floating Village" near Bayview, Idaho has been part of the community's history since 1910. These homes are fully equipped for full time residents or vacationing families.
The Spirit of Sandpoint High School: The Old Sandpoint High School
The old Sandpoint High School has been a part of the community for 93 years. It is filled with memories of 31 years of graduations and the beginning of the famous Sandpoint Bulldogs.
The McKinley School
Education is a cornerstone of great cities, and Spokane is no different. The elegance of buildings like the McKinley School testify to the value that early Spokanites attributed to public…
The Sperry Mill Company
Spokane stands on the edge of a sea of wheat, and grain and milling was a growth industry in the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. There are several mills still standing to…
The Florence Crittenton House: A Home for Wayward Women
One hundred years ago, women had little access to birth control or legal ways of ending pregnancies. For unwed women, an unplanned pregnancy could lead to expulsion from the home and social disgrace.…
Nat Reiss and the Spokane Carnival
Carnivals and Circuses were big business in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Barnum and Bailey’s ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ and the popular Ringling Brothers Circus were two of the biggest…
Punk Rock Comes to Spokane: Spokane's musical heritage is more than Bing
A three-ring circus?
St. Ignatius Hospital: A Haunted Hospital in the Palouse?
Religious orders were vital in establishing hospitals in the West. St. Ignatius Hospital is one the first hospitals built in the Inland Northwest by the Sisters of Charity.
Alexander F. MacLeod House
"Remembering advice: 'Go West , young man, and grow up with the country'. I packed my trunk, my sheepskin included, crossed the great divide and landed in Spangle in 1880." Dr. Alex MacLeod
John R. Monaghan Statue: Martyr to An Obscure War: Killed by Alfred Thayer Mahan
This dashing young man who perches in front of the Spokane Club, leaning on his sword and staring down the traffic on Monroe with steely-eyed determination is John R. Monaghan, who died because of a…
Hillyard Library
A library is a necessity for any civilized neighborhood. After Spokane annexed Hillyard in 1924 the area qualified for more city services. One of the major services provided by the city, and a staple…
Falls City Opera House: Spokane's First Live Theater
The rude frontier hamlet of Spokane experienced its first taste of the nightlife in 1887 when the Falls City Opera house opened at 706 West Main Street. Spokane's "first and only theater" was open to…
Horse Rings
For the first decades of Spokane’s history, its citizens got around on foot or on horse. In a very few places downtown, horse rings can still be found in the granite curbs. Here, on the corner of Main…
Dutch Jake's Park: West Central's Most Famous Resident Memorialized
Goetz's "capacity for friendship and his charity" had made him "known from one end of this country to the other"
The John A. Currie House
Built during Spokane's "Age of Elegance", the Currie house is a fine example of the Queen Anne style of architecture.
Doomsday Hill: Bloomsday's Toughest Climb
If you’ve never seen a city taken over by almost sixty thousand runners, visit downtown Spokane on the first Sunday in May. Since 1977, the Lilac Bloomsday Run has been a major event for the city.…
Mount Saint Michael
The cornerstone for the current Mount St. Michael was laid in 1914, but the history of this Catholic church is much older.
Father Joseph Cataldo arrived in the Inland Northwest in 1865 as a…
Francis H. Cook
A forgotten founder of Spokane, Francis H. Cook was one of the most influential people in Spokane’s History.
Little is known about Cook’s childhood other than in 1851 he was born a twin to Silas…
Julian Edward Itter: "Father of North Cascades National Park"
The natural beauty of Washington State is an artist's paradise.
Carriage Stones
Before the advent of the electric trolley in 1889 or Ford’s Model T in 1908, Spokanites got around by foot or by horse and buggy. The height of the carriage era lasted from 1850-1910, a time when…
The Original Cabin and Mansion of A.M. Cannon
Here once stood the grand mansion of A. M. Cannon
A.K. Mozumdar and the Problem of Whiteness: A Spokane immigrant and an historic court case
The crowds who came to see Akhay Kumar Mozumdar at this church in 1916 considered him a holy man, possibly even a miracle worker. But was he white? Few today know the story of Mozumdar, or how this…
Helga Estby's Walk Across America
A suffragist marches coast to coast to save the family farm.
Ice Harvesting- local and global
Before the invention of the refrigerator, Americans relied on the iceman. His frequent deliveries were similar to the milkman. He started his route at a local ice-warehouse where he loaded ice blocks…
Marble Bank Building
It was once considered by Spokanites as the most beautiful bank building west of the Mississippi River.
Bank of Spokane Falls
The Oldest Bank North of the Snake River
The North Division Drive-In at the Y
Circa 1952: The Y Drive-In of Spokane
In the 1970's the City Corporation Council warned Spokane to "clean up its ordinance" after receiving complaints from church groups that the old drive-in theater at the Y was playing pornographic…
Puttin' on the Ritz
: The Ritz Theater of Spokane, Washington
circa 1924
"The little theater charms and satisfies and makes an attractive addition to Spokane's Playhouse Row" (Spokesman-Review, 11 May 1924).
"The World's Largest Stage"
: Spokane's Golden Age Auditorium Theater
It was the "crown jewel" of a small town that had burned to the ground just one year before...
Traces of the Past: Mohawk "Block": Historic Buildings in Unexpected Places
Tucked away in a corner of this odd-shaped parking lot, behind the historic Frank's Diner, is a sliver of Spokane history. Actually, a large granite block of history.
At the west end of the parking…