In the 1990s Spokane gained national attention for a whites-only sperm bank. Things did not go as planned, and the spank bank soon tanked.

In April of 1996, Spokane found itself in the national spotlight. "Sperm Bank Is For Whites Only -- Spokane Effort Reportedly Funded By Tycoon" blared a headline from the Associated Press. The story ran in newspapers across the country.

The whites-only sperm bank was funded by Floyd Kimball, a racist Ohio businessman. His work was part of a long history of eugenics in America. Beginning in the early 1900s, some wealthy white Americans began to worry about the future of the country. In their opinions, too many non-whites were having too many children. They embarked on various campaigns to support white supremacy.

Kimble's Foundation for the Continuity of Mankind, with its headquarters in Spokane, sought to collect and disseminate "sperm from high-achieving white men." to protect "racial purity" and the preservation of the white race. It would serve as a "repository for the future," according to Floyd's wife Doris, "in case the purity of mankind is wiped out by famine or disease." Another company employee explained that the sperm bank had been established in Spokane because of the region's "overwhelmingly white population."

A surviving profile of one donor provides an idea of the kind of "high-achieving white men" the Kimbles were looking for. "My genetics are almost half Swedish; some Scotch-Irish; some English; a bit of German; a small touch of Dutch." the 6'3" tall anonymous donor, with a graduate degree from the University of California at Berkely, reported. Kimble also reportedly asked the entire Norwegian Olympic team to donate their sperm--though none took him up on the offer.

The sperm bank received abundant publicity, some outraged and some mocking. Located in a former bank building, the "Night Depository" slot was a particular target for humor.

The effort was short-lived. By 1997 the sperm bank had shut down, and it is not clear if any woman was ever impregnated by the sperm collected by the FCM. Kimble also briefly partnered with the better-known Repository for Germinal Choice, Robert Graham's much-ridiculed project to collect sperm from Nobel laureates to improve the human race and slow the growth of non-white “retrograde humans."

Kimble died in 1998, and his family seemed uninterested in pursuing his eugenic dreams. What happened to the donated sperm is unclear, but its fate was likely similar to that of the Nobel sperm bank, whose end is described in David Plotz's book The Genius Factory:

"The frozen vials--once so precious that they had been double-locked and shielded by lead ... were dumped unceremoniously in red biowaste bags and driven off to the incinerator. Dr. Graham's dream began in ice and ended in fire."

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In the early 1990s, second-graders in Mrs. Sara Jane Aebly’s class at Windsor Elementary School discovered that Washington State did not have an official state fossil. Encouraged by their teacher, they decided to try to create one.

After some research and discussion, the students settled on Mammuthus columbi, the Columbian mammoth. Until about 12,000 years ago, Columbian mammoths populated much of North America, from present-day Canada to as far south as Nicaragua. These relatives of the elephant could be about 12 feet tall and weighed 7–9 metric tons. Many of the best specimens have been discovered in Eastern Washington, where the repeated Ice Age Floods left “a giant bathtub ring” of mammoth skeletons.

The effort to win official approval of the Columbian mammoth as Washington’s official fossil took years, carried on by a series of students in Aebly’s classes. In 1998 four Cheney students went to Olympia to testify before the state legislature. The bill to make the Columbian mammoth the official state fossil was passed and signed into law by Governor Gary Locke that same year.

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This dashing young man who perches in front of the Spokane Club, leaning on his sword and staring down the traffic on Monroe with steely-eyed determination is John R. Monaghan, who died because of a book.

In 1890, Alfred Thayer Mahan published his magnum opus, The Influence of Seapower Upon History. Thayer was a geopolitical strategist and an admiral in the United States navy, and he argued that throughout history great empires had flourished by ruling the seas. America, Mahan wrote, should build up its fleet and seize islands that could function as naval coaling stations around the world. The book had a huge influence on policymakers in Washington D.C. and the world over--and would eventually prove fatal to a jug-eared Spokane teen named John R. Monaghan.

Monaghan's father James was an early settler of the region who made a fortune in mining and railroads. He sent his son to Gonzaga College, where John was in the first graduating class of 18 students. As ambitious as he was privileged, young Johnny went east to the Naval Academy, the first person from Washington State to attend that institution. Fueled by the admiral's writings, the great age of American Imperialism was underway, and Monaghan was its eager instrument.

The U.S. Navy of the 1890s was the cutting edge of empire. Aboard the battleship Olympia, Monaghan saw service across the wide Pacific. He took part in naval shows of force in China and Japan. He participated in the ceremonies marking the forced annexation of Hawaii into the American domain in 1898. He helped intimidate Nicaragua, where America was considering building a canal to link the seas. It was heady work for a young naval officer from Spokane.

Monaghan's luck ran out the next year, in Samoa. Since the 1880s the islands had been caught in an imperial tug-or war between the United States, Britain, and Germany--none of whom thought the Samoans themselves had a particularly strong claim to their homelands.

The conquest of the islands was a brutal affair. In 1899 the USS Philadelphia, where Monaghan served as an officer, shelled and destroyed native villages, with sailors and marines going to shore to burn out any survivors. It was on such an action on April 1, 1899, that Monaghan was killed.

The Samoans ambushed a combined American and British force at the Second Battle of Vailele. The leader of the expedition fell under heavy fire, as did a number of the enlisted men. Monaghan tried to rally the men and rescue his wounded commander, but the allies were outgunned in unfamiliar terrain. Monaghan died, and the survivors beat a hasty retreat. He was 26 years old.

The Americans and British soon conquered the islands in a campaign of naval shelling, that included some of the first uses of powerful chemical explosive shells. One witness was Fanny Stevenson, widow of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. She later recalled, "shells bursting everywhere; the cries of the bedridden and the helplessly wounded burning alive in their blazing hours; women in the pangs of childbirth ... mangled children crawling on the sands." The Samoans soon surrendered and their islands were divided between Britain, Germany, and the United States.

A defeat such as the one at Vailele, far more than a victory, needs a hero. Monaghan was pressed into service one more time. "The men were not in sufficient numbers to hold out any longer, and they were forced along by a fire which it was impossible to withstand. Ensign Monaghan did stand." the official report would read. "He stood steadfast by his wounded superior and friend—one rifle against many, one brave man against a score of savages. He knew he was doomed. He could not yield. He died in heroic performance of duty."

On October 26, 1906, the Ensign John R. Monaghan Memorial was dedicated in Spokane with suitable pomp and circumstance. Five thousand Spokanites turned out for what the Spokesman-Review described as "eloquent addresses" and a "magnificent parade" a mile in length, that included every active military man, veteran, and marching band the city had to offer.

If you go to see the memorial today you may be struck by the melodramatic bronze bas-relief panel on the pedestal, supposedly depicting the death of Ensign Monaghan at the hands of the Samoans. Monaghan is pictured at the very moment of his death, falling heroically in the familiar 19th-century manner of Davy Crockett or George Custer. Strangely, the Samoans look more like Africans than Polynesians, and in place of the modern weaponry they carried that day are shown using bows and spears. The artist rewrote the history of the incident to play up the very stereotypes of "savages" that were used to justify things like conquering and annexing islands on the other side of the world.

And what of Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose book might be said to have sent young Monaghan off to war in the first place? He continued to teach at the Naval Academy, eventually running the place. He died just before the outbreak of the First World War, itself in part a product of the rising tensions of the naval arms race his thinking had produced.

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In the early 1880s two men were hanged without trial, one Chinese and the other a Spokane Indian.

This quiet street corner in Cheney was once the scene of two brutal murders.

From 1881 until 1886, the frontier village of Cheney was also the seat of government for Spokane County. A wooden, two-story courthouse and plank jailhouse were the sum total of government buildings. If you were arrested in Spokane County in those years this was where you ended up.

In 1883 Lee Goy, a Chinese immigrant, was arrested for murder. The victim, an unnamed Chinese woman, had been bludgeoned with an axe behind a Cheney hotel. Another Chinese man testified that Goy had been on the scene, and when Goy was arrested he was found with some of the dead women's property in his possession. "That night while our quiet town was wrapped in sleep," reported the Cheney newspaper, "some party or parties broke open the jail, took the Chinaman out and hung him to a pine tree a few feet from the jail." It was further noted that the "deceased came to his death by hanging, and that the parties were unknown."

An even darker incident the next year reveals more about how such extra-legal violence worked in early Cheney. In 1884 a Spokane Indian man (whose name is recorded only as "Indian Sam") was accused of raping a white woman in Spokane Falls. He was arrested and brought to jail in Cheney. That night a group of Cheney residents took matters into their own hands. They busted down the door of the jail and dragged out the accused. Their first attempt to hang the man failed when the rope broke, but the second effort succeeded. The killers left their victim hanging in the pine tree beside the jail.

Cheneyites concocted a story that the deed had been done by a mob of masked men from Spokane Falls, who had come in under the cover of night, murdered the Indian man, and rode home "by separate routes." We peaceful Cheneyites had nothing to do with it! This is very typical of 19th-century lynchings, where citizens of the town where it happened blame the whole thing on an unidentifiable mob from somewhere else.

In this case, however, we have contemporary evidence to the contrary. The afternoon before the lynching, Charles Ratcliffe, a Cheney resident, wrote a letter to his sweetheart back in Illinois. It reads in part:

"Oh Louise will I tell you of the dreadful thing that happened here yesterday and what I fear is going to happen tonight. A woman riding alone between Cheney and Spokane about dark was met by two Indians and draged out of the wagon by the fiends after accomplishing their purpose left her insensible. Hundreds of men turned out and today the principle was caught and is now in jail. Tonight an attempt will be made to lynch him. I sincerely hope they will although it is an awful thing to do. I saw him as he passed the office just a few minutes ago."

The letter shows that the murder of the Indian was no act of spontaneous violence by people from out of town. It was planned in advance, by the residents of Cheney, and was generally known about town. This also means that the sheriff and other local law enforcement were complicit in the act. Cheney Academy, which would become EWU, was established just two years before. Did its students or faculty participate in the massacre?

Within days, it became known that they had murdered the wrong man. Indian agent Sydney D. Waters noted that he had been "positively assured" that the killers lynched the wrong Indian, but that he "no doubt deserved his fate." This too is sadly typical of 19th-century lynchings. Often the wrong party was murdered, but when this was discovered the local newspapers concluded that the victim had been a "bad" person anyway and needed killing.

The body of the Indian man was cut down the next day and taken to Spokane for burial--there is no record of where. The lynching of Indian Sam was no isolated incident however--it was a part of a larger movement in the 1880s and 90s to drive Indians off their traditional lands in Cheney and Spokane and to force them to relocated to the reservations.

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The tiny community of Valleyford has a story like many of the small towns of the Palouse. The area was first settled in the 1880s, and Valleyford was incorporated in 1906. The town enjoyed some decades of prosperity and growth before a combination of changing agricultural practices, new patterns of transportation, and the Great Depression took much of the life out of the town. If you look around, however, there are many signs of history to be discovered here.

The Valleyford area was known to the Coeur D'Alene and other Indians as a rich region for harvesting camas. Valleyford was settled in the 1880s, and like much of this region of the Palouse was known for its fruit orchards and wheat farms. By the early 1900s Valleyford was a thriving community with a bakery, train station, barber and butcher shops, a bank, a law office, a dance pavilion, a newspaper, a high school and not one but two hotels.

Much of the Valleyford's early success came with the arrival of the Inland Empire Electric Railroad in 1907. The "Bug" as it was sometimes called linked the town to Spokane as well as to the other small towns of the Palouse. Electricity arrived with the railroad as well, and for years Valleyford was wired to the same circuits used by the railroad. "When the trains turned on the power to leave the station, the town's lights would dim," one resident recalled.

A 1912 map shows the ambition of the founders, with the town platted for further growth that never occurred. Falling farm prices and increased mechanization began to erode the town in the 1920s. The Great Depression hit Valleyford especially hard, permanently closing the Community State Bank and many other businesses. The high school closed a few years later, and by the 1960s the town disincorporated.

An interesting walking tour of Valleyford is available in a pamphlet that can be purchased at On Sacred Grounds coffee shop. A stroll around town will reveal concrete hitching posts from the 1880s, the old mercantile store, a 1916 community building, and more.

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The Deep Creek school was built in 1905, to replace an earlier, one-room schoolhouse that stood at the same spot.

The town of Deep Creek was founded in 1883 as Deep Creek Falls. An 1889 guide for immigrants touted the "exceedingly rich agricultural country" in the area and the town prospered. Among its earliest settlers was Joel Warren, who later became Spokane's first police chief. In 1894 the town name was shortened to Deep Creek. At its height the community boasted a store, a mill, several churches, and this fine school with over 100 students.

By the early 20th century, however, many rural communities of eastern Washington were fading fast. Increased mechanization and lower prices for crops caused a steep population drop in the 1910s and 20s, and for many small towns the Great Depression was the final blow. So it was for Deep Creek, which disincorporated as a town in 1939. This school closed in 1944.

Today this school and the nearby church are maintained as private residences. Please respect the privacy of those who live there.

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Early Spokane was a town full of working men and working women. For laborers throughout the region the city was a refuge and a pleasuring ground. Miners, loggers, and agricultural workers would come to Spokane to spend their pay on liquor, gambling, and women. They would leave town with empty pockets, aching heads, and sometimes, with a venereal disease.

In 1910 the Bodie building housed the offices of Dr. Taylor, one of Spokane's many specialists in treating what were often called "the diseases of men." In a newspaper advertisement, Taylor boasted that "My modern up-to-date methods effect a certain and speedy cure" for "men's disorders." Nor was he alone in offering such services, the same issue of the Spokane Daily Chronicle has advertisements for Dr. Kelly, Dr. Fred M. Klussman, and the Spokane Medical Institute, all located within a few blocks and all offering to cure men of their unnamed diseases. Nearly every American city of the time period had scores of similar clinics.

Unfortunately, there were no effective cures for syphilis or gonorrhea in 1910, not in Spokane or anywhere else. Taylor and the others treated venereal disease with everything from topical applications of mercury and silver nitrate to herbal and chemical medicines to be ingested. Often the "doctors" at these clinics had little or no actual medical training. Potential patients would be lured into the clinics and frightened into paying for treatment by the spectacle of wax figures which graphically illustrated the advance of syphilis and gonorrhea. In Spokane, Dr. Kelly and the Spokane Medical Institute each advertised free "museums" of such figures.

Historians are not sure how many Americans had venereal diseases at that time, but there are abundant hints that they were common. During the First World War, Army doctors identified almost 400,000 soldiers with venereal disease. Scott Joplin and Al Capone and even Abraham Lincoln are believed to have carried syphilis.

In the 1910s a national campaign against "quack" medicine, along with the emergence of a genuinely effective cure for syphilis in the drug salvarsan, ended the era of such clinics. The 1930s saw a widespread and effective public health campaign to identify and treat sufferers from syphilis and gonorrhea, and the development of antibiotics after the Second World War

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