By Liz Wood
There’s nothing terribly notable about the Chevron station on the corner of Monroe Street and Third Avenue. A person fueling up their vehicle might admire the elegant Brotherhood of Friends building across the street, or perhaps notice the Steam…

By Elia Ureña
Spokane is the birthplace of Glen Michaels, who lived here until he was drafted into World War II in 1945. His love of art began at a young age when he began drawing and painting at the Spokane Art Center, a program of the New Deal during the Great…

By Zachary Welsh
As war erupted in Europe in July of 1914, its effects hit the shores of the United States years before its own entry into the war. In the industrialized world of the early 1900s steel was a much needed, if generally available resource. However, the…

By Leanne Allen
Before the Civil Right Movements in the 1960s, Jim Crow was the law of the land. Spokane was not exempt from racial segregation. Black Spokanites were restricted to the few restaurants, nightclubs, and hotels that were willing to serve them. Even…

By Devrick Barnett
Walking in Riverfront Park today, it might be hard to imagine it any other way. However, what once occupied that space was one of the grandest, most elegant rail depots in Spokane, the Union Pacific Depot or Union Station. When former Union Pacific…

By Logan M. Camporeale
The Spokane River is a vital resource that has attracted humans to the region for thousands of years. The river has provided food and fresh water for generations, but the arrival of white settlers in the late 1800s presented a substantial challenge…

By Adrienne Sadlo
If ever Robin Leach from the hit TV show "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" could time travel back to the late nineteenth century and do an exposé on homes of Spokane, he would certainly visit that of Anthony McCue Cannon, one of the…

By Joanne Percy
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 prove it. Sperry Mill, on Sprague, was owned and…

By Paige M. Nash
The river that lent its name to Spokane has also been a barrier to the development of the city. No sooner was Spokane established than city fathers looked for places to bridge the raging currents. Today's Monroe Street Bridge, a Spokane…

By Casey Baulne
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 run by the Dawn Mining Company. The radioactive ore…

By Paige M. Nash
Washington Water Power (WWP), renamed Avista in 1999, is one of few local institutions to trace its history to when Washington was a territory. In early 1889, a group of Spokane businessmen organized to harness hydroelectric power from the Spokane…

By Robert M. Lambeth
This impressive structure is the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul (CM & SP) Viaduct, built in 1909. The CM & SP railway was, for the first few decades of settlement, one of the most important railroad companies in the Palouse region. …

By Nicolette Reames
In the late 1800s, the fast-growing city of Spokane attracted immigrants from all over the world, including China and Japan. As in other American cities, a combination of anti-Asian prejudice and personal preference caused Chinese and Japanese…

By Nicolette Reames
Organized on May 11, 1888, Greenwood Memorial Terrace is the oldest of the community cemeteries in Spokane. It is also the most extensive, encompassing one hundred and sixty acres divided into three levels called "terraces", the Japanese…

By Cory Carpenter
How did Spokane get a hundred-acre park right in the middle of downtown? Riverfront Park was once a tangled mess of railroad tresses and industrial overgrowth. During the 1960s it was hard to even tell that a river flowed through the city because it…

By Cory Carpenter
Expo '74, the first environmentally themed World's Fair, opened in Spokane in May of 1974. Native American heritage was a focus. "What more fitting theme could be chosen than an environmental exposition for the presentation of a…

By Cory Carpenter
In 1974, a World's Fair helped Spokane remove unsightly railroads from its downtown riverfront and left Riverfront Park in its wake. Spokane was the smallest city to ever host a World's Fair, so it took the hard work of countless…

By Cory Carpenter
In May of 1974, an embattled President Richard Nixon visited Spokane to dedicate the 1974 World's Fair against a backdrop of lies, cover-ups, and political drama. By this time, the president was in his second year of the public scandal that…

By Cory Carpenter
Canada Island has had many different names and faces in the last 150 years. Today the island is a part of Riverfront Park and serves as a natural oasis in the middle of downtown. Forty years ago it was known as Cannon Island and was largely covered…

By Cory Carpenter
The 1974 World's Fair took place against a backdrop of improving relations between the United States and Soviet Russia. In May of 1972, USSR officials and President Nixon signed an environmental accord contributing to a general thawing of the…

By Cory Carpenter
The 1974 World's Fair provided Spokane with an opportunity to reclaim the beauty of Spokane Falls, which had been hidden for years by railroad tracks. In order to provide visitors with the most stunning views of this natural feature, fair…

By Mayra Villalobos
This unassuming building is a reminder of Spokane's important early history as the center of a fruit-growing region, and also of the many brick warehouses that once dominated the eastern edge of the city. In the late-19th century and…

By Lacey Sipos
On December 31, 1886, Spokane had its first telephone exchange and an infrastructure for the technology was established. Thaddeus Lane, an entrepreneur from Ohio, was responsible for the exchange found himself in need of a headquarters. Lane quickly…

By Lacey Sipos
At the turn of the century, thousands of Spokane workers lived in hotels much like this one. Built in 1910, the Hotel Upton was a Single Room Occupancy Hotel (SRO). Typical of SROs at the time, the Upton's 102 units had a sink and a wardrobe. Of…

By Zachary Wnek
The Reid House is a private residence, please respect the residents' privacy by remaining on the sidewalk as you examine this historic home. What is known today as the Reid house was built in 1900, designed by Albert Held for Charles L.…

By Lee Nilsson
In 1974, Spokane became the smallest city to ever host a World's Fair. The community used the opportunity to re-vitalize the depressed downtown district. The Great Northern Railroad Depot, which had occupied the centrally located Havermale…