"Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound" was the motto of the Yellowstone Trail, America's first transcontinental highway, established in 1912.

Interstate 90 was not the first road in the United States to connect east to west. In fact, I-90's route through the Silver Valley closely follows that of its earliest predecessor, the Yellowstone Trail. The Trail was inspired by J.W. Parmley of Ipswich South Dakota in 1912. Parmley and his business partners needed a good road from Ipswich to Aberdeen, twenty-five miles away. Their intent rapidly expanded. Soon their road would extend to the next town, then to North Dakota, then on to Yellowstone National Park. Eventually, Parmley envisioned "a good road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound."

The Yellowstone Trail Association was established in 1912 with its headquarters located in Minneapolis. This organization did not actually build roads. Instead it helped local chapters raise money and provided instructions for road construction and maintenance. The Yellowstone Trail Association also worked to promote domestic tourism, printed maps and pamphlets which they handed out along the trail, and advocated the automobile for long distance trips.

The Yellowstone Trail Association was a particularly successful example of the Good Roads Movement, In the late 19th century bicyclists and then automobile owners organized politically to push for improved roads. By 1920 The United States had over 200 named auto trails, though only two, the Yellowstone and Lincoln highways, were trans continental in scope.

The Yellowstone Trail cut through Idaho as the Interstate does today. After leaving Montana, the trail passed through the towns of Mullan, Wallace, Kellogg, and Cataldo. From here, the trail descended into Fourth of July Canyon, while the interstate today climbs the pass. The trail then passed through Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls before crossing into Washington. Few people remember the Yellowstone Trail as being the first northern transcontinental highway. However, to the communities it passed through, it meant tremendous social and economic opportunity.

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Mining has always been hard, dirty, and above all dangerous work. This monument memorializes one of the worst tragedies ever to strike the Silver Valley, the Sunshine Mine Disaster of 1972.

Of all the mines in the Silver Valley the Sunshine Mine, located between the cities of Wallace and Kellogg, is perhaps the best known. Over its one-hundred-and-ten-year history, the Sunshine has produced millions of tons of lead, zinc, and copper; and over 360 million ounces of silver.

On the morning of May 2, 1972, 173 miners arrived at the Sunshine Mine to start their work day. Surface and underground foreman took charge of activities while principal operating officials, who would normally have been present, attended the annual stockholders' meeting in Coeur d'Alene. Shortly before midday, two electricians began shouting warnings when they smelled smoke shortly after leaving their shop. Unable to locate the source of the fire, they alerted the foremen. Men were sent with verbal warnings, but most miners only became aware of the blaze when the smoke entered their workplaces.

The fire was located on the air intake side of the mine, circulating deadly carbon monoxide throughout the main airways. Many of the exits were blocked by smoke and only a few men could be hoisted out at a time. Working under dangerous conditions, rescuers evacuated as many miners as they could, but after eighty men were hauled out, the hoist operator died. After the hoist man's death, only two more miners were rescued.

By the time rescue personnel arrived at 2:00pm, ninety-one miners had died from smoke inhalation. The rescue crews attempted to locate and extract any survivors, but in the end they could only recover bodies. The cause of the fire was thought to be the spontaneous combustion of some refuse near scrap timber, according to The Bureau of Mines. The Sunshine Mine disaster was the worst mining tragedy in the Idaho's history.

In front of you stands the impressive Sunshine Miners Memorial, erected by sculptor Ken Lonn. This monument was not placed here to memorialize the tons of silver that were extracted from the surrounding mountains. Instead, this memorial commemorates the ninety-one miners who lost their lives in one of the most horrific mining disasters to date.

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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 was largely covered by railroad tracks and parking lots. The story of Riverfront Park is a story of several influential Spokanites whose goal was to rejuvenate Spokane's central business district and reclaim the beauty of the river.

Downtown Spokane had experienced a depression following WWII. The downtown retail stores were losing customers to the new shopping malls in the suburbs. Cars replaced trains, leaving the downtown railroad stations an empty shells. As downtown buildings fell into disuse and disrepair, shoppers were replaced by homeless persons, and urban blight set in.

In 1959, Joe Kipper, manager of Sears and president of the Chamber of Commerce, and John Hieber, downtown property manager, created Spokane Unlimited to revitalize the downtown. Spokane businessmen soon joined in, including Kinsey Robinson, president of Washington Water Power, and bankers Charlie Parks and Neal Fosseen. They hired King Cole (see "Expo 74: The Father of the Fair"), a professional city planner, to help them reach their goals.

Spokane Unlimited knew it wanted to remove the railroads and leave a city park in their wake, but they also wanted to do something that would benefit downtown businesses. However the costs were enormous. Could Spokane get someone else to pay for the project? Eventually they decided to try to host a world's fair to accomplish their goals, the sort of project that could draw substantial state and federal funding.

Could Spokane pull it off? Never before had such a small city hosted a World's Fair. First they had to gain the property from the railroads. By 1972, representatives of Spokane Unlimited were able to convince the railroads to turn their property over to the city free of charge. With the land secured, members of Spokane Unlimited donated up to $100,000 each to get the project underway.

When the fair ended in winter of 1974 and the pavilions had gone, the Spokane riverfront had transformed. Spokane performed a magic trick. In the place of railroad trestles and concrete stood Riverfront Park, and the glorious falls which had been obscured from view for half a century.

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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 lifestyle based on harmony with nature?" asked one brochure. This American Indian was expressed in several ways, including tepee building, traditional garments, and most of all traditional dances. The totem poles on Canada Island are the only visible remnants of this cultural celebration which occurred at Expo '74.

Canada Island bears its name because it was host to the Canadian pavilion at Expo '74. The provinces of Alberta and British Columbia went to work preparing exhibits for the environmentally themed exposition. The Canadians included totem-pole carving demonstrations to highlight the native heritage of coastal peoples. Traditionally, totem poles can have many different functions or themes, ranging from images that represented the origins and lineage of a people, to supernatural experiences. To keep with the overall theme of Expo '74, totems were constructed which emphasized the environmental heritage of native North Americans.

Participants of Expo '74 watched these totem poles being constructed in traditional fashion. This was a long process which included stripping the bark and adzing away the sapwood, removing knots and other defective areas, drawing designs with charcoal and carving, then adding any appendages such as wings or arms. Although several totems were carved, only one remains on the island from Expo. This cedar totem was only partially finished and features the figure of a man on top with one hand reaching for the sky.

Another totem was added to the island in 1978 by the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council for its annual Bighorn Outdoor Adventure Show. This totem features an eagle spreading its colorful wings at its peak. While the totem built for Expo has a clear environmental theme, the second totem's meaning is unknown. Currently, the INWC, who undertook a refurbishing project in 2010, is trying to gain some information about the meaning of the pole so a plaque can be added describing why the totem was built and by whom.

The totem poles on Canada Island continue to remind Spokanites of the people who lived here for millennia before the first settlers arrived. They remind us that before there was a city, there was only the falls, and a people that depended on them to survive.

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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 individuals to make Expo a reality. First among them was King Cole, the father of Expo.

Cole was given the name King because his father was convinced he was destined for great things. "This will open a lot of doors for you when you grow up" his father would say. Cole would later find out how right his father was. In 1963, Cole was working as an urban planner in San Leandro, California, when he was hired by a group of Spokane businessmen to help Spokane rejuvenate its downtown. Cole was given the idea of hosting a World's Fair, the type of project that would generate federal and state funding. This was an ambitious and even unrealistic plan, and Cole would have to perform miracles to pull it off.

King's wife, Jan, remembered that at first people just played along with King's Expo idea because they didn't want to offend him. "I don't think anybody believed the railroads would move... or that there would ever be a park there." King would prove the doubters wrong. In three years he traveled 700,000 miles gaining the necessary local, state and international support for the fair. He was able to negotiate with the Spokane Railroad companies, convincing them to turn their land over to the city free of charge. He was also involved in securing foreign exhibitors.

By no means did Cole accomplish all of this on his own. There were many individuals whose sacrifices made the fair a possibility. But Cole was always seen as the driving force behind the project. "We have to give an awful lot of credit to a man who never said die" said Jane Johnson. "I'm not also trying to belittle nor to negate the efforts of the Expo Board because there were many, many people on the Board... who assisted in the negotiations but you've got to have a guy who has a dream and hold onto that idea and move in that direction... that was King."

King Cole died in 2010 at the age of 88. The headline for his obituary in the Spokesman read, "Spokane loses visionary leader in King Cole." While King may no longer be with us, we will always have the park, and a beautiful view of the falls to remember him by.

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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 would bring down his administration.

Nixon administration officials were eventually indicted for their part in the scandal and an attempted cover-up. One Expo official, Jane Johnson, recalls, "it was about the time that he came for the opening of the World's Fair here in '74 that the world began to crumble for him.... As you may recall, on that day of the opening, we had quite a demonstration group that were up on the bridge there during the ceremonies." The situation provided Spokane with an amount of national publicity it had never experienced. NBC featured two shows primarily focused on the demonstrations against Nixon. For Spokane, any publicity was good publicity.

In the coming months things got worse for the President and he was forced to resign in August of 1974. Expo was still going on, and the fair responded by removing all the pictures of Nixon from the U.S. Pavilion. The resignation perplexed many of the foreign exhibitors. King Cole was asked by a member of the Soviet Commerce Department, "What is going on with Nixon? He's the best American leader we've ever known."

As time went by the shock of the resignation had subsided and pictures of Gerald Ford began to take the place of Nixon's. Nixon's visit to Spokane would be remembered as one of the many awkward moments in the weird and wild saga of Watergate. And Spokane would become the first Fair to be opened by one president and closed by another.

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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 railroad tracks. In other eras it was host to a laundry and called Crystal Island. Today, it is hard to imagine the islands past when you are surrounded by swaying pines and the gentle roar of the upper falls.

James Glover was the first European to see the potential of the falls in terms of water power. Canada Island was chosen as the location for the first water pumping plant in 1884. The island would receive the name Cannon Island, after A.M. Cannon, founder of the Spokane Mill Company whose flour mill was located on the banks of the river just north of the island. Later, the island would be given yet another moniker, Crystal Island, after its main occupant Crystal Laundry and Water Works. After a century of development, changing names, and functions, the island was finally overcome by railroad tracks.

The island we know today is a product of Expo 74, when Spokane leaders hatched a plan to clean up the downtown by bringing a World's Fair to town. The railroad companies were encouraged to donate their land to the effort, and local, state, and federal money was used to restore the natural beauty of the island. By the time the Fair opened in May of 1974, the railroad tracks were replaced by walking paths, and unsightly tresses made way for stunning views of the upper falls.

The city council adopted a resolution in August of 1974 to rename the island Canada Island, to honor the Canadian pavilion during Expo. The Canadian pavilion was a favorite among fair goers due to several attractions. In the center of the island the Canadians constructed a small open air amphitheater which gave visitors a perfect place to picnic, or just sit and chat. Hundreds of Canadian groups performed at this amphitheater, causing the island to resound with song and dance that went on well into the night.

The Canadians also put a focus on their native heritage at their pavilion. Visitors were given the opportunity to watch traditional totem carving practiced by the tribes found along British Columbia's rugged Pacific coast. These totems were meant to signify the environmental heritage of the native groups that carved them.

Today Canada Island is quiet once again, a natural refuge where one can sit beneath a pine tree and listen to the falls.

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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 Cold War. The Soviets were one of the first nations to promise to come to Expo '74, which greatly contributed to the success of the plan. Their participation marked the first time since the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940 that the Soviets had exhibited on U.S. soil.

The Soviets not only participated in the Expo, they tried to steal the show. The USSR pavilion was massive, by far the biggest exhibit at Expo, covering an acre and a half of Havermale Island. Visitors were greeted by a colossal sign hanging outside the pavilion which weighed over 4,500 pounds and consisted of 18 pieces which fit together like a puzzle, forming a giant map of Russia. The extravagance continued inside, where visitors were greeted by a giant bust of Lenin. The Soviets wanted to demonstrate the role of the Soviet state in preserving natural resources. A section of the pavilion was devoted to Vladimir Lenin, who signed over 200 environmental decrees after the 1917 Revolution.

Around 200 Soviet staffers were living in Spokane during Expo '74, a number significantly greater than the number of Soviets employed at the embassy in Washington D.C. or the Soviet delegation at the United Nations in New York. Expo '74 was a good chance for Americans and Soviets to learn about each other's culture firsthand. However, a good amount of Cold War tension was still present. Some of the Soviet staffers experienced hostility from locals at the fair, while some locals were received with rudeness by the Soviet staffers. Tensions such as these were to be expected after thirty years of mistrust.

Common ground was also discovered, usually in the form of drinking contests--which were almost always won by the Soviets. Jack Geraghty, Vice President of Exhibitor and Guest Relations, recalls getting a call from a friend who engaged the Russians in one such contest. "He'd been in this drinking match, and the next thing he knew, he was lying in the gutter out there on the side of the fairgrounds... the cops had come along and scraped him up, and he was down in the drunk tank." Though mistrust was present, many Americans left with fond, if not hazy memories of the Soviet participants.

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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 planners built the SkyRide. This attraction would provide visitors with unparalleled close ups of the falls for years to come.

There were two different sky rides featured at Expo, one over the fair, and the other over the falls. The ride that went over the fair was simply a ski lift minus the snow. Visitors would hop on the lift and experience the fair from a whole new perspective. Riding the chairlift provided a bird's eye view of many of the pavilions and perhaps helped fairgoers plan their day in terms of figuring out what to go see first. Like most structures built for Expo, the chair lift was removed from the park when the fair ended.

The second ride runs directly over the falls and serves to this day as one of downtown Spokane's main attractions. Unlike the chairlift over the fair, the Spokane Falls SkyRide comes in the form of a gondola to better protect visitors from the raging waters below. The ride takes visitors from its starting point on Havermale Island, over the falls, and under the Monroe Street Bridge into a world of mist. Many Spokane locals have taken this ride at least once. Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian author remembers riding the gondola with his father in one of his essays. He recalls, "My father told me to hang on... He was smiling as I struggled to keep my shoe."

One goal of Expo 74 was to clean up the river and reclaim the beauty of the falls. There are now many views of the falls from several different vantage points in the downtown area. But the SkyRide is by far the most spectacular. In 2013 the SkyRide was named "One of the Top 12 Scenic Cable Rides in the World" by Conde Nast Traveler Daily Traveller. The SkyRide takes full advantage of the second longest urban falls in the United States, but written descriptions often fail to do it justice. The only way to fully appreciate this ride is to experience it for yourself.

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