The cantilever Snake River Bridge has had a few different names over the years because of its past. The Old Columbia River Bridge was originally constructed in 1927 at Vantage. The carbon steel bridge crossed the Columbia River to link Grant and Kittitas counties. At 1,636 feet, it was one of four Columbia River bridges built in the era of jazz music and bootlegger cars.

The construction of the Wanapam Dam in the early 1960s increased the Columbia River’s water level and made it necessary to build a higher, four-lane bridge for the route that became I-90. In 1963 the Washington State Department of Transportation deconstructed the bridge and placed it in storage. Standard trestle designs made bridges easily reusable, and therefore economical. It was because of this that the bridge’s design was so common.

In the late 1960s,the current of the Snake River slowed because of the Lower Monumental Dam. It became impractical for the small automobile ferry to remain the only way for cars to cross the river near Starbuck. In 1968 the old Vantage bridge was resurrected over the Snake River. In its new location the two-lane bridge at Lyons Ferry stretched to reach a length of 2,040 feet. This increase in span was made possible because of four prestressed beams made of concrete.

Today, the Snake River Bridge at Lyons Ferry stands as one of the oldest steel cantilever bridges in the state. It’s on the Washington State Department of Transportation Historic Bridge list, the National Register of Historic Places, and the Historic American Engineering Record at the Library of Congress, proving it is a bridge with its own past.

For more (including 3 images), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

Susan Glover spent her golden years at Eastern Washington State Hospital For the Insane after one terrible day.

On July 1, 1899, Susan Glover returned to her new home at this spot to find all of her belongings out on the sidewalk. Glover was locked out of the house she had just bought.

Glover's former husband, James Glover, was the city's most famous pioneer, often called "the Father Of Spokane." Susan and James married on September 1, 1868, in Salem Oregon and in August of 1873 they moved to land James had bought to establish the city of Spokane. In the 1880s Glover was elected twice as the town's mayor. The city grew and the Glovers prospered. Their wealth was displayed in 1889 when they built their beautiful mansion. The mansion included a stained-glass portrait of each of them. By the summer of 1891, the couple was legally separated. Susan left Spokane for her hometown of Salem. James filed for and was granted a divorce in the spring of 1892. The ink on the divorce papers was hardly dry before James remarried. He moved his new wife, Esther, into the mansion where they lived until financial problems caused them to build a new, more modest home for themselves.

As the door to Susan’s room at the Eastern Washington State Hospital for the Insane closed, she undoubtedly thought back over previous few weeks. Since returning to Spokane seven years earlier, Glover rented apartments. In late June, she approached C.B. Strong about purchasing a house he had for sale. On 1 July, she hired movers to take everything to the house. Later that evening Glover returned to find all of her belongings on the sidewalk.

Undoubtedly shocked and confused Glover walked around Spokane until she sat down on the steps of the McCrea family home. The McCrea’s called the police. Officer Beals arrived and offered to escort Glover home. To what home? Glover had moved out of an apartment for a house she was locked out of. Officer Beals was insistent; Glover had to go. Eventually, she was forcibly placed in a police wagon and taken to jail.

Doctors and others testified at Glover's sanity hearing. Friends said, "within the last year her mental affliction has been growing worse." At 56 years old, Glover would have been considered, by the hospital's superintendent, as having “almost no hope of recovery.”

A key symptom of dementia, Glover's most likely diagnosis, is forgetfulness; however, Glover hadn't forgotten to hire movers. Nor had she mistakenly gone to her old address. Glover had gone to the new address indicating she remembered she had moved. Because of her age and very little personal interaction with the hospital's doctors Glover spent the last 22 years of her life, in the hospital. Glover is buried in the patient cemetery at Eastern Washington Hospital in Medical Lake, in a grave marked only with a number.

For more (including 5 images), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

Eastern Washington Hospital For The Insane promised humane treatment for the mentally ill.

Eastern Washington Hospital for The Insane opened in 1891. The first 122 patients were transfers from Western Washington Hospital for The Insane.

The hospital represented a break in the way that the mentally ill were cared for in Washington. The French theory and practice of "moral treatment" reached America. Moral treatment ended the use of chains and asked staff to treat mentally ill as patients rather than criminals. Moral treatment outlined orderly, regimented activities, such as access to a library, as part of the patients individualized treatment plan. It ended bloodletting, purgatives, emetics, and torturous hot and cold showers that had been all too typical of past treatments.

Eastern Washington State Hospital cherry-picked the best parts of moral treatment theory and left the rest behind. The fundamental course of treatment was isolation from family and friends, and those non-disabled patients worked on the hospital grounds. The use of restraints was limited and had to be authorized by the doctor.

Moral treatment became the standard of care in Washington just as it was falling out of favor in the rest of the nation. Moral treatment failed to cure most patients, and the pressures to do so lead to dishonest bookkeeping. Patients were discharged prematurely and hospitals used the word "recovered" loosely, which lead to a revolving door of patients being readmitted and released. Moral treatment, with its high cost and lack of promised results, lost favor with state legislators and began losing funding.

Not until the beginning of World War II was a clear change in treatment seen at Eastern State Hospital. Group and one-on-one counseling became part of patient treatment. Another advancement came in 1954 with the use of pharmaceuticals. In 1963 the federal government passed the Community Mental Health Center Act. The hope was that individuals could receive short-term out-patient care from new, smaller facilities rather than face long-term institutionalization.

Today only those suffering the most severe cases are sent to Eastern State Hospital.

For more (including 3 images), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

Now submerged beneath Lake Roosevelt, Gifford was a small town founded by a man with a westering spirit.

Beneath the blue-green waters of Lake Roosevelt lie eleven drowning victims: the towns that were flooded by the rising waters behind the Grand Coulee Dam. Gifford was one of those towns.

James Gifford, the town's founder, was born in 1843 in the frontier town of Lansing, Michigan. His parents moved from New York to Michigan to support what would become a large family with nine children. It might be from them that Gifford inherited his pioneering spirit.

When the Civil War broke out, nineteen-year-old James enlisted in the Union Army. In 1863 he was part of a week-long assault on the Confederate Army that is remembered as The Mine Run Campaign. On the fourth day of fighting, he took a bullet to his left leg, which had to be amputated. He was officially discharged June 15, 1864.

On July 4th, 1873, James married Sarah Elizabeth Williams. The couple had four children before deciding to move to the Washington Territory in 1889. The family loaded up a covered wagon with all their possessions, including a china cabinet, and set out to the west.

By 1890 James owned a farm near the Columbia in Stevens County. His four brothers and two sisters settled nearby. As the Gifford family grew in number, so did the community where they had settled. James and Sarah built a store and a post office where Sarah served as postmistress, a position she would hold until her death in 1918. The town's population peaked in 1910, then slowly declined to just thirty-nine people when it came time to move to higher ground.

The dam’s construction forced Gifford to relocate to its current location. The post office and Independent Order Of the Odd Fellows Hall were the only two buildings that the townspeople moved. Everything else was destroyed and the debris removed. Even the trees were cleared away, the last on July 19th, 1941. The original town site of Gifford is now ninety feet below the surface of the water. James Gifford died October 28th, 1926. Some of his descendants still live in Stevens County.

For more (including 3 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

While there was "never a shot fired in anger" at Fort Spokane, life on the fort was not without danger.

Mired in strict routine and with little chance of combat, soldiers at Fort Spokane looked forward to their free time away from the base. The young men stationed at the fort were lucky to have the small town of Miles just across the river. There they could blow off steam, drink, and escape the boredom of life at the fort. Miles was the quintessential military town, with gambling, prostitution, and other shenanigans on offer.

The waters of the river flowed free, and without a dam to hold them back, the currents were much stronger than they are today. The soldiers at Ft. Spokane used a small cable ferry to make the river crossing at a narrow spot. The ferry was little more than a raft, which an operator pulled across the river using a steel cable attached to trees on either side. While the crossing was at a relatively calm point in the river, the water was still fast, cold, and deep.

With drink in their bellies and an impaired ability to walk, let alone swim, more than one soldier drowned in ferry accidents. And on at least one occasion, the ferry cable broke and the water washed the ferry down the river. The wreckage of one such accident was recovered downstream, and the soldiers were buried in the Ft. Spokane cemetery.

For more (including 2 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

For Indian Agent Albert M. Anderson, kickbacks and embezzlement were all in a day's work.

For years, the term "Indian Agent" was synonymous with corruption, and Albert M. Anderson was a perfect example. At the turn of the century, the “spoils system” was in full effect: the Bureau of Indian Affairs turned a blind eye to agents who misused their position to enrich themselves. Agents were political appointments, so the only requirement for landing the job was to be from the same political party as those elected to office.

In 1889, Hal J. Cole was the Bureau of Indian Affairs Agent assigned to the Colville tribes, and Anderson was his clerk. Perhaps it was there that Anderson learned the art of creative bookkeeping. When Cole left office in 1897, Anderson took over as the Colville agent. But by 1903, a routine internal review showed that embezzling was the least of Anderson’s abuses. His crimes included taking kickbacks from mining companies prospecting on reservation lands, and even claiming to be the guardian of the reservation's orphaned children, so that he could lease the children's land and pocket the money. Anderson's misdeeds shocked even the most seasoned agents. By the next year, President Theodore Roosevelt himself ordered Anderson removed from office.

Anderson proclaimed his innocence, perhaps emboldened by the long history of unchecked corruption that had gone before. In April of 1908, Anderson appeared before a Federal Grand Jury. The district attorney was confident in his case against Anderson, but the jury did not render an indictment. In September, Anderson appeared in court again, this time on charges of perjury related to the mining claims. But in October 1909, the case was dropped, and Anderson walked away a free man. Was there an even bigger scandal beneath the surface? We may never know: Since Anderson was not indicted, the court records remain sealed to this day.

For more (including 3 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

Once a magnet for Catholics in the area, St. Paul's was left abandoned in the woods for forty years before its "resurrection" as a historic site.

The tribes that lived near the Columbia River were enthusiastic about the "blackrobes" and their teachings. So much so that Father DeSmet, a Jesuit priest from Belgium, wrote his superiors in 1840 that he needed more priests to minister to the local Indian tribes. The Jesuits were known as blackrobes because of the black robes they wore. Father DeSmet made the long journey back to Europe to find the Jesuit priests he needed, and returned five years later with two men: Father Anthony Ravalli and Father Hoecken.

In 1845 the newly arrived Father Rivalli, with the help of local Indians, built a small mission from “rough logs and brush.” In these early years St. Paul's was a seasonal church. Father Ravalli would make the two-day journey from the St. Ignatius Mission in Cusick to St. Paul's during the fishing season to minister to the large gatherings of tribes.

In 1847 a permanent church was built near the temporary building. It featured glass windows and walls covered with white mud, not unlike the nearby Fort Colville. The building served as both a place of worship and living quarters. With two wood-burning stoves, it became possible for a priest to live comfortably at St. Paul's year-round. During his tenure, which lasted until 1851, Father DeVos baptized 491 people, held 123 marriage masses, and shepherded 99 souls to the hereafter.

The 1860s were a time of growth and change in and around St. Paul's. The mission had new stained glass windows installed and the new priest, Father Joset, saw an increase in the population of Catholic settlers. Within the decade two new churches had been built closer to the center of the growing community. In the 1870s the opening of an Indian boarding school in Kettle Falls and the closing of the trading post further reduced the need for St. Paul's. The night of August 14, 1875, the lamps were put out for the last time.

The mission sat forgotten until the 20th century. By 1938 the mission's walls could no longer stand on their own and the roof and floor were gone. Restoration efforts began that year under the leadership of Father George. Working with the local Knights of Columbus, he set out to restore the mission to its former glory. The organization used historic tools and techniques to make the new building match the original as much as possible: They hand-sawed logs and even used reproduction nails and hardware. The Mission today stands on its original quartzite foundation.

In 1951 St. Paul's was gifted to the state of Washington, which transferred ownership to the National Parks Service in 1974. In that same year St. Paul's was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For more (including 5 images), view the original article.

Download the Spokane Historical app for Android and iPhone
Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube