Short on clothes but long on intrigue, Willie Willey and his choice in dress (or lack thereof) made an impression on twentieth century Spokane. Born in 1884, Willis (Willie) Willey grew up in Iowa but moved to Spokane in 1905. As a young twenty year-old man he worked odd jobs to support himself including farming, hunting, and fishing. In 1920 Willey purchased a forty acre plot of land just east of Hillyard to be his permanent home and sanctuary.

This ordinary life changed to extraordinary shortly after his move. There are many stories about why Willie stopped wearing clothes. Some say it was the death of his mother, others claim it was a dispute with his church, still others claim a failed romance. Whatever the reason, Willey stopped wearing traditional clothing in favor of khaki shorts. In all weather he stuck to this uniform only adding a green sun visor in the summer and rubber boots in the winter.

Spokane area newspapers began paying special attention to Willey because of his appearances in court wearing only khaki shorts and a long beard. He became involved in a dispute with a nephew over his property, his nephew suing him for $141.70. Willey refused to pay and in return the court ordered his land sold at a sheriff’s auction and Willey to serve jail time. This was just the beginning of his problems with the law. After serving jail time, and his property sold to another owner, Willey refused to leave the land he believed was rightfully his. The new owner took issue with this and continually contacted the police in an effort to remove Willey from the land.

In 1933 Willey decided to get out of Spokane for a time and travel across the country to the World’s Fair in Chicago. His plan was to sell photographs of himself along the way and at the fair. Willey was not met with open arms in many of the cities he visited, spending time in jail in both Portland and Chicago. Because of his arrest, Willey did not get to spend much time at the World’s Fair but he headed on to his home state of Iowa to visit family and hopefully escape further persecution.

Willey headed back to Spokane and to his former property in 1940. After turning his truck into a camper he left again in 1946 with his pets: one coyote, one bull snake, two dogs, five skunks, six white rats, and twelve guinea pigs. He again returned to Spokane in 1951, having added a few more pets to his entourage. They lived out of his camper while Willey went back to work attempting to recover the land he once owned. Willey was never able to regain ownership.

On May 13th, 1956 Willey died in a car accident at the age of 72. Known across the country as “Spokane County’s Wild Man” this eccentric individual's death was reported as far as Ottowa, Canada.

Long gone, Willie Willey has not been forgotten. In 1978, a large rock in the Spokane River was named Willie Willey Rock. And in 2015, a new mural at the corner of Division and Sprague features a smiling Willie-with a strategically-posed marmot in front of him, symbolizing Willie’s love of nature and covering what he would not.

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Hillyard began as a working men’s railroad town with a rough-and-tumble reputation. But families quickly followed and the addition of women and children softened the image of the town. Schools provide the mark of a civilized society, and more than a few have called Hillyard home.

The first school to serve the Hillyard community, Arlington Elementary School, opened in 1896. Arlington sat on the corner of Everett and Regal and had nine rooms. In 1926 the school merged with a smaller primary school, and both moved into the new and larger building on the corner of Francis and Smith. Hillyard’s growing population pushed the school district to enlarge the school in 1950, and in 1955. In 1980, School District #81 built the most recent rendition of Arlington School on the same property.

In 1901 Columbia Elementary School opened close to Hillyard’s rail shops to serve grades one through four. Attendance quickly grew and a large brick addition was added. By 1945 the school served 162 students in grades one through eight. In 1949 the school saw more changes including a paved play area and two war-surplus portable classrooms purchased from Fairchild. By 1980 enrollment decreased due to the new middle school and the building was deemed surplus.

What eventually became Regal Elementary opened in 1907 as “Hillyard High” and housed grades one through twelve. The building located at 2707 E Rich also served as the district office for Hillyard School District #122. The second level of the school was reserved for high-schoolers and their three teachers, whereas the first and basement floors housed all of the younger grades and the district office. By 1913 the new Hillyard High School was completed at the corner of Everett and Regal, taking the older students and the district offices out of the original building. In 1915 the name officially changed to “South Regal,” but by 1924 when the township of Hillyard voted to become a part of the City of Spokane they dropped the “South” and the school took the name that exists today. They stayed in the old building until 1981. Regal’s new building came during an era of modernization in SD #81, with various schools receiving new buildings that are still in use today.

Today, Hillyard residents continue to utilize Arlington and Regal Elementary schools, Gary Middle School, and Rogers High School. Though the population has shrunk from the height of the Hillyard rail yards, the region continues to benefit from exceptional public facilities.

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Hillyard has always been proud of its history and heritage, as demonstrated in the many painted murals throughout the neighborhood. Let’s take a closer look at some of the Hillyard murals.

Hillyard's first mural no longer exists. In 1978, a massive 80 by 24-foot painting was completed, fittingly on one of Great Northern’s former buildings--the icehouse. The painting depicted the first train arriving in Hillyard with Jim Hill holding a pocketwatch to check its timeliness with onlookers and workers on hand to celebrate the event. The mural that started it all was paid for by the Spokane Arts Commission and completed by artist John Forrest Thamm. Unfortunately the mural was lost when the building burned down in 1994.

Though the original mural was destroyed, the Hillyard Business Association had already set in motion a mural project throughout the business district. In the summer of 1994, they hired Tom Quinn to complete a mural on the corner of Wellesley and Market on the east side of a nursing home. The 16 by 53-foot piece of art depicts the former rail yards and a portrait of James J. Hill. They planned to complete a mural every year in the following four years. Though the mural plan has been stop-and-go, the community remained dedicated to beautification of their neighborhood.

The mural project has exploded over the previous twenty years. Hillyard now has over 10 official murals and 13 total located throughout the business district. Most of the artwork depicts some aspect of Hillyard’s railroad history, focusing on the rail yards and trains. The businesses wear their mural like a badge of honor and all in the community agree they have added beauty to formally underutilized exterior walls.

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This is located on private property, please do not disturb the owners or the tree.

The large tree that stands before you, with its distinctive curve, once provided shade to a trading post for Native Americans and the Hudson Bay Company. Baptiste Peone, the chief of the Upper Spokane, chose the location in the 1840s, and it became known as Peone Prairie. The trading site was chosen for its proximity to Forts Colville and Coeur d’Alene, as well as with the various Native American tribes of the Inland Northwest. Just off Doak Road and Argonne you can see this majestic Ponderosa Pine and its peculiar south-leaning trunk.

A cabin for Chief Peone and his family also stood at the trading location. Legend has it that Chief Peone erected a truce flag at the top of the tree to honor agreements signed between the Spokane Tribe and the United States Government. This flag hung until the wind’s slow and steady gust turned it to tatters. In 1887 the Spokanes signed a treaty in which they were forced to give up their ancestral lands and move onto reservations.

After Native Americans were forced out of the area, their land and the treaty tree fell into private ownership. A Spokane Daily Chronicle article noted that in 1922 “lightning struck the treaty tree. A second bolt almost at the same instant found its mark in another forest monarch standing a mile to the east. This tree was split through and died, while the treaty tree, although the bark was scarred, was otherwise unharmed.” This tree has managed to survive many chances at destruction including a fire in 1908 where all of the other historic structures burned.

Legend has it there is a clause in the deed to the land stating, “no hand of man shall harm the treaty tree,” and the tree remains today as a testament to the past.

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Visitors to Hillyard will see the name Kehoe prominently displayed -- on the Kehoe Building, park, and apartments. These are monuments to Agnes and Thomas Kehoe, pioneer citizens of Hillyard.

In 1894, Agnes Kelly married Thomas Kehoe, a successful businessman from Minneapolis, active in the horse and carriage industry. Like so many others in the period, the couple decided to go west in search of a better life for their family. Thomas left first, headed for Seattle, but settled in Hillyard upon meeting up with a cousin who found him work with the Great Northern Railroad station. Agnes and their daughter Ethel (born in 1895) caught up with him in 1903, in what would become their permanent home.

Thomas set up a successful business, a saloon called the Hillyard Bar. The saloon’s proximity to the railroad and its thirsty workers proved a boon for business. All was going well until one Tuesday in 1905 when masked robbers burst into the Hillyard Bar. They shot Thomas in the face and made off with $185.00. Though severely injured, Thomas made a full recovery and even testified against the attackers, sending them to the state penitentiary.

The success of the saloon allowed the Kehoes to build their own building on the corner of Market and Olympic in 1907. They utilized the first floor for businesses, including the saloon, and the second floor housed eighteen single room occupancy hotel rooms. The building still stands, look up and you can see the Kehoe name on the lintel. Business boomed, and Thomas served as Hillyard’s mayor for a brief period in the 1920s. The real politician in the family, however, turned out to be Agnes.

Shortly after arriving in Hillyard, Agnes immersed herself in social life and various philanthropic activities. Energetic and committed to helping others, Agnes was active in the Social Service Bureau, the Spokane Woman's Club, the Girl Scouts, the Washington State Tuberculosis League, and the Catholic Daughters of America. Extremely well-liked throughout the community, her supporters urged her to run for State Representative of the third district.

Without ever campaigning, and pledging only never to sell her vote and never to get drunk, Agnes won the seat in 1939. She maintained her position until stepping down in 1947. In 1951 Agnes earned the prestigious Marian award from Holy Names College due to her significant contributions to the community.

Thomas died in 1946 and Agnes died in 1959 but their legacy lives on in Hillyard. The building they built in 1907 still stands. During prohibition they switched from the saloon business to a general hardware store, a business their daughter ran into the 1960s.

There is now a park dedicated to the Kehoes (between Nelson St and Lacey St on Wabash Ave). Agnes also has a low-income apartment complex named after her in the old Hillyard High School building, a position she would take pride in as she dedicated her life to helping the less fortunate.

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James J. Hill lived the late nineteenth century American dream. Through hard work, perseverance, and sometimes sheer luck, Hill amassed a fortune in the railroad industry though his company Great Northern.

Hill was born in a rural community west of Toronto, Canada in 1838. Hill attended school through the age of fourteen, when his father died and he and his siblings went to work to support the family. Shortly after he moved to St. Paul he worked his way through the shipping business, eventually owning a company of his own.

By middle age, Hill gained control of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, which would later come under the Great Northern umbrella. Great Northern became wildly successful under Hill’s leadership. In 1893 the railroad connected St. Paul to Seattle, becoming the northernmost transcontinental railroad, and the only one to have been privately funded. It was also the only railroad company not to file bankruptcy in the financial panic of that year.

It was this railroad line that created the town of Hillyard. James J. Hill strategically chose the location for his workshops northeast of the city of Spokane to avoid taxation. Citizens of this new city centered around the railroad industry honored Hill, over his objections, in naming their city Hillyard (Hill’s yard). Although James Hill died in 1916, his legacy lives on in Hillyard, a place which continues to be proud of its railroad heritage.

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The Great Northern railroad is the soil on which the town of Hillyard grew.

James J. Hill chose this location for his railroad terminal in 1892. The small town rapidly expanded around the railroad industry. The initial population was composed of single men, but families quickly followed. Locals began calling the city Hillyard (Hill’s Yard) and the name stuck--despite James Hill’s objections.

Hillyard became widely known in the railway industry in the 1920s for the articulated locomotives they built and repaired on site. In 1927 the employees of Great Northern completed engine No. 2034, one of the most powerful steam engines built in the world.

Great Northern continued to support the busy facility with a large expansion project in the 1950s. In 1954 they announced a modernization program to bring the Hillyard rail yard into the diesel-era. This proved to be the height of the railroads and Hillyard reaped many of the benefits. An average of 2,400 freight cars went through the terminal on a daily basis. During this time Great Northern employed more than 1,300 people in Hillyard and the annual wage bill added up to more than $6,000,000, providing steady jobs and pumping serious cash into the local economy.

The success was significant, however, the decreasing use of trains for transportation and industry led to a merger between Great Northern and Burlington Northern in 1970. Slowly train use continued to erode and Burlington Northern chose to close the Hillyard shops. The shops officially closed on October 4, 1982 ushering in a new era for Hillyard. Detached from the railroad the city had depended on for its entire history, many citizens have made sure the neighborhood will not cease to exist like the railroad they once depended on so greatly.

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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 and Catherine Cook in Ohio. He made his way out west, eventually to Tacoma, where he became a member of the Territorial Legislature and plied his trade as a printer. In 1880 Cook married Laura McCarty. The McCarty family were pioneers in Washington State and Laura's sister, Clara, was the first graduate of what is now the University of Washington. After the wedding the couple moved to Spokan Falls. This small community only had thirty five families and less than 300 people, a far cry from life in Tacoma.

Cook began the first newspaper in the city, the Spokan Times. In print or in person, Cook always spoke his mind, which often got him into trouble. After an altercation in 1882 Cook decided to get out of the newspaper business and sold the Spokan Times.

Cook then focused on property, owning a significant chunk of what is now Spokane’s South Hill. There is still an addition, Cook’s Addition, named after him, and he donated the land to the city that would become Manito Park. His first home looked over the city from the beautiful bluff where the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist not stands. The Panic of 1893 hit Cook hard, and he was forced to give up most of his South Hill holdings.

Cook then moved onto one of his most important and enduring projects in Spokane, Mount Spokane. He purchased property on the side of what was then called Mount Carlton or “Old Baldy” and began construction of a road to the top in 1908. In 1912 he joined forces with other Washington State and Spokane dignitaries to rename the mountain Mount Spokane.

Cook died in 1920, leaving behind his wife and eleven grown children. His legacy lives on in Mount Spokane. His land, along with other donations, became Mount Spokane State Park in 1927.

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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 missionary to the Spokane Indians. In 1866 he re-established a chapel that Father Joseph Caruana initially started in 1864. Just two miles northeast of Hillyard, the chapel shared Chief Peone’s property near the Treaty Tree. In December of that year, the cabin was dedicated to Saint Michael and became the first ordained church in Spokane County.

In 1882, Cataldo purchased a thousand acres from the Northern Pacific Railroad in Bigelow Gulch, just north of the original chapel. The land primarily served as a farm to provide produce and dairy products to the small school and seminary founded along the Spokane River in 1887, Gonzaga College. Because of the significant increase in the number of attendees of Gonzaga the Catholic Church decided in 1912 to separate the seminary from the school and relocate it to the farm. Julius Zittle, the architect for the project, had a long resume of designing educational and institutional buildings throughout the area.

The bluff on which the building sits that provides such sweeping views of the region posed quite a problem for the builders. An 1,100 foot long rail line was built to haul building materials up to the site. The two rail cars could haul three hundred tons each, and eventually carried over two-and-a-half million tons of brick. The building was officially completed in 1916, and a wing was added in 1929.

The Jesuits sold Mount St. Michaels in 1978. The property ended up in the hands of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate, a traditionalist Catholic group that practices Latin Mass. The building now serves as a church, convent, and school for students kindergarten through twelfth grade. The building is accessible to the public, call ahead for tours or to visit their small museum.

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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 in twentieth century entertainment, was a public library.

Residents in Hillyard attempted for many years to provide the public with free access to books. In 1908 the Hillyard Baptist Church opened space in their basement to the public for a reading room, but had only had a handful of books. In 1911 it was reported in the newspaper that the Carnegie Foundation had put up $10,000 for a public library in Hillyard, but those plans never panned out. Efforts were renewed in 1916 by the principal of Hillyard High School. He opened the school’s 2,000 books to the public for a couple of days a week in exchange for donations. This only whetted the public appetite for books.

In the fall of 1928 the Spokane City Council appropriated $20,000 for a Hillyard Branch of the Spokane Public Library. The city hired Whitehouse & Price to design the building which was completed in December of 1928. Many Hillyard elites attended the opening gala of the library, including Agnes Kehoe. This library remained a pillar of the community and hosted a variety of events throughout the years. Always up on current trends, they even hosted a pet rock show in the 1970s.

The Hillyard Library has remained mostly unchanged from its 1929 construction. Though the city abandoned the property in 1983 for a larger and more modern location, a school and later a church occupied the building until 2013. The building was recently put on the Spokane Register of Historic Places and will remain a fixture in the Hillyard neighborhood for years to come.

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President Herbert Hoover sent the telegram that unveiled the Lincoln Statue in 1930. Over 40,000 people gathered in Spokane on Armistice Day to view the bronze statue that many had contributed donations to help build.

As early as 1922 the Lincoln Memorial Association was created in Spokane to organize the creation of an Abraham Lincoln Statue. The Lincoln Memorial Association commissioned University of Washington professor, Alonzo Victor Lewis for the project. The cost was set at $25,000 and the Association set to work fundraising. The group had originally hoped to raise the money in one year, but it took eight. Lewis briefly lived in Spokane, and even though many cities were interested in buying the sculpture of Lincoln, Lewis was willing to work with the Association to raise the remaining funds for a few extra years.

The statue was placed in the heart of Spokane's downtown, on the corner of Monroe Street and Main Avenue. Lincoln stands 12 feet high, and resides on a base of ten feet. The scale of the statue is impressive. Two short quotes from Lincoln are etched in the base, one on his right side and the other on his left. This statue is said, by the Spokesman Review, "to be the only statue of Lincoln protraying him in his role as commander-in-chief of the Union Armies." At one point Lewis owned the clothes that Lincoln was assassinated in, and supposedly based the clothes Lincoln is wearing in the statue upon them.

The Lincoln Statue experienced quite a bit of action in the 1960s. Senator John F. Kennedy stopped in Spokane four times during the 1960 presidential election and on September 6, 1960 he gave a speech at the Lincoln Statue. Thanks to funding from a local penny drive, in 1967 the statue was moved 30 feet east of its original location for a traffic revision. And in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a group of civil rights activists held a march ending at the Lincoln Statue.

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[Note: This location is a private residence, not open to the public.]

This Spokane home has a Hollywood pedigree. It was built to promote the 1948 film, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Seventy-three similar Blandings homes were built across the country. The homes were built by different contractors and the styles varied greatly by location. In contrast to the film these homes not only came worry-free, but also fully furnished and with all of the latest household gadgets.

The film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House released to theaters in 1948 and starred Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. This comedy chronicled the Blandings family's move out of New York City to the countryside in Connecticut. The Revolutionary-era home they bought ended up being a tear down, just the beginning of their problems. The new home they decided to build was far more expensive than anticipated and the plot follows as everything goes wrong in the completion of the new homes construction.

Tours of this South Hill home took place over two weeks in September of 1948. In some locations a small fee was charged for entrance to view the home, but in Spokane entrance was free. The New England style farmhouse listed for sale for $75,000 came fully furnished by the Crescent and boasted three bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a den.

The latest household gadgets that would have saved any housewife hours per day were included in the purchase price, those gadgets being a garbage disposal, clothes washer and dryer, and electric dishwasher. But there was also something for husbands, an automatic garage door opener in the two-car garage.

The Spokesman Review reported: "Visitors seemed most impressed by the luxurious master bedroom with its canopied bed and connecting dressing room and bath." The house still stands in Spokane's Comstock neighborhood, with few changes besides a paint job and the addition of a backyard pool.

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The steel rails that still peek through the pavement here and there in Spokane remind us of the days of trolley cars. At one time, the tracks that lay before you carried Spokanites to work, shops, restaurants, and leisure. Residents even had a safe ride home from the downtown bars and theaters with night owl service.

The first trolley cars in Spokane began in 1888 and allowed the city to expand out of the downtown core. People had the option to live away from the hub of shopping, working, and sometimes rowdy downtown. Trolley lines were created by local real estate developers to entice people to buy lots outside of the city's core, thus many lines preceded the building of homes further west into neighborhoods such as Browne's Addition. The first trolleys in Spokane were horses-drawn cars between downtown and Browne's Addition, and opened for business in 1888. The fare was just a nickel.

Horses needed a significant amount of care and had trouble on some of Spokane's steep streets. Companies began experimenting with steam, cable, and electric cars as early as 1889. Because of Spokane's proximity to the river, electricity was cheap. Electric trolleys proved superior to the loud steam engines, and the lines were easily moved compared to cable cars. By 1894 all of Spokane's trolley lines converted to electric power.

The real estate companies were not interested in running the trolley lines after their lots were sold, so the various trolley companies were sold to either Spokane Traction Co. or Washington Water Power Co. by 1903. For Washington Water Power it was good business. The company had the ability to supply cheap electricity to the trolleys because of their operation of dams on the Spokane River, and then make an additional profit from ridership fees.

At their height, electric trolleys and interurban railways carried passengers all across the Inland Northwest. A rider could travel from Cheney to Coeur d'Alene or from 38th and Grand on the South Hill all the way to Francis and Howard on the north side. In 1910 Washington Waterpower's lines boasted 150 trolley cars and 24,000,000 riders!

The arrival of the first automobiles in Spokane in the 1910s signaled the decline of the trolleys. In 1922, Spokane Traction Co. and Washington Waterpower Co. joined to become Spokane United Railways. Ridership declined significantly in this period due to the availability of cars, Spokane's population stagnation, and the companies seeking cheaper transportation alternatives to trolleys. Busses proved far easier for public transportation routes because they required no rails or electric lines to be hung, the routes could be changed easily, and also the companies would not be responsible for maintaining the roads where the tracks lay. Because of these reasons the last trolley car retired in 1936. Spokane United Railways car No. 202 made its final journey to Natatorium Park in a parade where the wooden trolley was filled with bales of hay and lit on fire.

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Founded in 1883 when Washington was still a territory, the First Presbyterian Church has grown up with the City of Spokane.

Reverend Thomas G. Watson came to Spokane from Wisconsin in 1883 by request of local inhabitants to lead a Presbyterian congregation. The church initially had no permanent home, so Watson would hold services in various locations around town including the Cannon Building, Glover's Hall, and the Van Dorn Opera house. By 1886 the band of wandering Presbyterians was able to raise funds to build a home. The first church was located on the corner of Monroe and Riverside, where the Spokesman Review building currently stands. After just three short years the church was offered a sum of money too high to pass up, and sold their lot to the newspaper.

In 1889, the Great Spokane Fire destroyed all of their possessions when their temporary home, the Falls City Opera house, burned. Joining in on the post-fire building boom, the First Presbyterian Church opened their doors a second time on the corner of Second and Jefferson in 1890. In 1892 the Church hosted the funeral of Spokane Chief Garry, the first Native American on the Columbia Plateau to attend school at the Hudson Bay Company settlement at Red River. Whites and Natives alike joined together to honor this leader who had been a (sometimes) devout Presbyterian.

The church made one final move in 1910 to the current location of Fourth and Cedar. Designed by architect Loren Leighton Rand, the grand building in the Gothic Revival style is still a sight to see. With beautiful stained glass windows based on the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and one of the largest pipe organs in town, the builders spared no expense. By 1952 the growing church needed additional space and built additions to the main church including a gym, classroom space for children, and a commercial kitchen.

The First Presbyterian Church has stood the test of time in Spokane. The Church is very proud of its history and most recently celebrated their 130th anniversary.

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