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The Manito Park Zoo: Manito Park Tour Spokane Park Highlights Tour
The Zoo was part of Manito Park from 1905 to 1932. There were several small animal cages near Rose Hill and the rock gardens, which housed skunk, coyote, bobcat, and other animals. While the zoo was…
Spokane's Amusement Park: Natatorium Park
In 1968, Natatorium closed. For some it would be the close of an era, for others, it was a long time coming. Though Natatorium was never owned by the Spokane Parks Department, it was a park many…
People's Park: Expo '74 and Riverfront Park
Once an Indian winter camp, this area where Hangman Creek (Latah Creek) and the Spokane River merge has been a popular site for campers, transients, and picnickers. According to Curly Jim, from the…
Chief Garry Park
Chief Garry Park is the principal place in the city where Chief Spokan Garry is remembered and honored. The park dates back to 1912 when seven acres of land were purchased and set aside as a…
John A. Finch Arboretum
Nestled between two busy highways, the John A. Finch Arboretum is a quiet getaway from the hustle and bustle of Spokane. With only the hum of the highway to distract visitors, this 56 acre park…
Comstock Park
Comstock Park is one of many philanthropic works in Spokane. By the 1930s, park design had different priorities, recreation rather than contemplation and an emphasis on youth activities. Mr. and Mrs.…
Stadacona Circle
Today a part of Grant Park, Stadacona Circle was one of the earliest parks in Spokane. Once located on Eleventh Avenue between Ivory and Arthur Streets, this small 1.3 acre park was donated to the…
Japanese Gardens - Sister City Program: Manito Park Tour
Before entering the Japanese Gardens, face northwest and you will see the Spokane Sister City sign at the corner of Bernard and Shoshone Place.
The Sister City program idea started in the 1940s…
Nishinomiya Tsutakawa Japanese Garden: Manito Park Tour Spokane Park Highlights Tour
Before the Japanese Gardens, this area was part of the zoo from 1905 to 1932. This area was home to ostrich and emu.
The Japanese Garden was designed by Nagao Sakurai. He designed 166 gardens all…
Making Way for the Freeway: Liberty Park
Decline of the old Liberty Park began in the 1950s when the Spokane Park Board decided to fill in the pond for health reasons. In 1952 the city decided to dump nonburnable waste into the depression…
20th Street Entrance: Manito Park Tour Spokane Park Highlights Tour
The main entrance to Manito Park is now at 18th and Grand, but in earlier years the entrance was at 20th and Grand. While today the area is green with grass and shaded by a few trees, in the first…
Cowley Park
This small park between West Sixth and Seventh Avenue off Division is nestled in the South Hill Medical Complex. This area was where the Spokane Indians established their winter quarters but when…
Tourist Camp at High Bridge Park
This camp site along Hangman creek in High Bridge park was a tourist destination from the early 1920s until the 1950s. Featured in the December 1946 trailer topics magazine, Westward Ho, the article…
Mount Spokane: Known as scq’wulsm to the Spokane Tribe, Mount Spokane has been important to local residents for 10.000 years.
While Mount Spokane was never officially a Spokane Park, the Spokane Parks department helped take care of it and was concerned with its future.
Previously known as Mount Baldy and Mount Carlton,…
The Colorful Past of Minnehaha Park
According to a long time Spokane resident, the City of Spokane had a reputation of "being a little on the wild side when it came to the proverbial wine, women, and song." By the early 19th Century,…
Senator Clarence C. Dill, Fairmount Cemetery
Clarence Cleveland Dill, commonly referred to as C. C., was instrumental in pushing Congress in the early 1930s to fund a study of the Columbia and Snake Rivers to determine the possibility of…
The History of Fairmount Cemetery
Fairmount, like Greenwood and Riverside, is the final resting place for many of the community's early pioneers and city developers - people from the mining, lumbering, railroading, banking, city…
Potter's Field, Fairmount Cemetery
Section 90 at Fairmount Memorial Park is known as a Potter's Field. This portion of the cemetery was donated, in 1897, by Spokane County for the purpose of burying the indigent and/or unknown persons…
The Unknowns, Fairmount Cemetery
Some of Spokane's earliest residents lived, or at least died, in anonymity. The Washington State Archives has 71 death records of unidentified persons found in Spokane during the period 1891-1907. …
Scattering Garden, Fairmount Cemetery
The most recent change in burial practices is the increasing use of cremation. According to the Cremation Association of North America, nearly 26% of U. S. deaths in the year 2000 resulted in…
A History of Greenwood Cemetery
As Spokane outgrew its frontier beginnings, its old church graveyards were at risk of overflowing, and the small pioneer cemeteries got in the way of land development. In order to solve both issues,…
Dr. Mary Latham, Greenwood Cemetery
Dr. Mary Archard Latham, Spokane's pioneer female physician, is one of early Spokane's most colorful and controversial characters.
Latham graduated from medical school in 1886, at the age of 42,…
Hidden Tunnel at Greenwood Cemetery
Would you believe there's a tunnel that runs through the cemetery grounds at Greenwood Memorial Terrace? It's true. The 1889 plat for the cemetery indicates a proposed railroad terminal in the…
Riverside Cemetery
The land where Riverside Memorial Park lies was originally a recreational municipal park, which opened in 1907 when John Aylard Finch spearheaded the organization of the Riverside Park Company. It…
John G. Lake, Riverside Cemetery
Faith healer, John Graham Lake, was a prominent evangelical preacher and contributor to the founding of the American Pentecostal movement in the early 1900s. He began the first healing rooms in…
Cliff Park: Spokane Park Highlights Tour
Standing at 2260 feet above sea level, this volcanic outcrop was used by the Spokane Tribe as a lookout. On a clear day you can see as far as the Little Spokane River and Mount Spokane.
The park…
Edwidge Woldson Park
Seventh Avenue and the lower South Hill was once the neighborhood of Spokane elites. Bankers, senators, businessmen, mining and lumber entrepreneurs, doctors, architects, and lawyers built their…
Riverside State Park: Spokane Park Highlights Tour
The land where Riverside State Park sits was once lands used by the Spokane Tribe and other local tribes. The Native Americans would meet at the Spokane Falls or near the confluence of the Little…
Spokane's First Legal Hanging, Greenwood Cemetery: Spokane's First Legal Hanging, Greenwood Cemetery
Where lays Charles Brooks? Who was he? Why is he in an unmarked grave? Mr. Brooks has the unfortunate fame of being the first legally hanged man in Spokane.
The 1891 Brooks case was quite the…
Spokane's Deadliest Disaster, Greenwood Cemetery
There are 15 unmarked graves at Greenwood Memorial Terrace that belong to railroad workers who were blown to smithereens on 06 September 1890.
A crew, of at least 24 men, was working that day to…