All Stories

Private Residence The Smith Cottage is both architecturally and historically interesting. Built in 1912 by Charles R. Wood, the Smith Cottage is also commonly referred to as the Smith House (not…

Glover House

Private Residence James Nettle Glover is commonly referred to as the "Father of Spokane." He, accompanied by his wife Susan Tabitha Crump Glover, essentially created the city after purchasing 160…

Richardson House

Private Residence Charles Prentice Richardson, a successful gold miner originally from Illinois, had this American Foursquare Style home built in 1906. The American Foursquare Style is typified by…

Blake-Ahlquist-Woolcott House

Private Residence The Blake-Ahlquist-Woolcott House (or just the "Woolcott House") was built in 1902 for Jacob M. Blake, an attorney at the Blake and Adams firm. Blake was the son of a noteworthy…

The Segregated South Hill: William H. Cowles, Jr.'s push for an all-white neighborhood

By CJ Mason

How one prominent Spokanite used racial discrimination to promote his real estate empire.

Spokane’s New Era In Transportation: In the early 1900's, this city had one of the largest concentrations of automobiles West of the Mississippi

By CJ Mason

Horse-drawn carriages became less desirable, streetcars and railroads were well established around the county and in the city, and a new contraption called the automobile became the dominant mode of…

Stewart Hall: Honoring Whitworth's Most Important Early President

By Cheree LaPierre

Home to thirty-five men and thirty-five women on two floors, Stewart Hall was built in 1963. Initially, Stewart served as an all men’s dormitory. It was dedicated in honor of Calvin W. Stewart who…

Carving the Columbia: The Ice Age Floods

These gently sloping hills beside the lake show the marks of a tumultuous process at work. This region of the Columbia Basin was carved over eons by the meander of the river, by slow erosion, and by…

Make Way for Rising Waters: The 1310 Line and the Flooding of Lake Roosevelt

How do you get two tribes, six counties, and nine federal agencies to agree on something? As work began on the Grand Coulee Dam, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was busy acquiring the land that would…

How the West was Watered: The Fruitland Company Irrigation System

If they’d known it would end up under a lake, they might not have worked so hard to bring water to this land.

The Orchard at Ft. Spokane

Today, most of Fort Spokane is bare foundations. But in the shade of the ponderosas on the western edge of the site, a few of the orchard’s original apple trees have held their ground for more than a…

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…

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.…

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"

Punk Rock Comes to Spokane: Spokane's musical heritage is more than Bing

A three-ring circus?

McEachran Hall: Where the President Works his Magic
: McEachran Hall: the administrative nerve center.

By Cassandra Staker

McEachran Hall serves principally as the current administration building at Whitworth University. The building is also home to the office of the university’s president, Beck Taylor. Students come here…

The Railroads of Silver Valley

By Casey Hagan

The Union Pacific Freight Depot is a legacy from Idaho's great age of rail. When precious metals were discovered in Northern Idaho, the region exploded with mining activity. Railroads rushed in to…

Midnite Mine

In 1954, the long and deadly hand of the Cold War touched the Spokane Reservation. Uranium was found in the remote mountains. To exploit this fuel and bomb-making material the Midnite Mine opened…

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. …

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…

Salmon and the Spokane Falls

For thousands of years, American Indians gathered here at the base of Spokane Falls to fish for salmon. In June of each year, giant 60 to 80 pound Chinook would make it to the Spokane River. Though…

Npil'x: "Hazy Area"