By Tracy L. Rebstock
This trail constructed along an abandoned railroad line was part of the old Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad Company. This passenger line transported people within Spokane as well recreational areas like Liberty, Hayden, and Coeur d'Alene…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
Aubrey L. White is the known as the father of Spokane's Parks. He arrived in Spokane in 1889 and spent a lot of time mapping, marking, and noting the incredible views and features in the Spokane area. He was instrumental in bringing the…

By Danielle Mujica
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Spokane Chamber of Commerce declared that the gold rush was on in Spokane Washington. Captain J. Richard Brown, who was a mining engineer, gave 9 speeches at the relief kitchen on Trent avenue in hopes of…

By Larry Cebula
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,…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
Cannon Hill Park was originally home to a brickyard. Henry Brook discovered a clay deposit in the 1880s and it was used for making bricks. Cannon Hill bricks were widely used in downtown buildings as the city rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1889.…

By Anne Coogan-Gehr
Welcome to Greenwood Memorial Terrace. A walk through this cemetery will be a tour through Spokane's history. In the late nineteenth century, Spokane Falls of the Washington Territories had a problem. Entrepreneurs were flocking to the young…

By Anne Coogan-Gehr
Chief Spokane Garry was a member of the Spokan Indians, a tribe that had lived along the Spokane River for centuries. The Spokan people are believed to be of the original hunter-gatherers that settled the region, descendants of tribes from the Great…

By Nikolai Cherny
Established in 1896, The Spokane Casket Company was one of the largest and longest surviving of Peaceful Valley businesses. Stephen Smith founded the company (originally on Post Street and called Spokane Coffin Factory) along with the Smith Funeral…

By Ryanna Thurman and Josh Van Veldhuizen
You are now standing in front of the foundation of what once was an officer's house. The officers and enlisted men of Fort Spokane were divided by a wide social gulf, as evident with the difference in their pay and living quarters.  A…

By Clayton Hanson
For nineteenth-century pioneers like James Glover, falling water represented power - the power to grind flour, to saw logs, and to build a city. These were the fundamental industrial activities in a region still rich in timber and already rich in…

By Laura Glasgow
The Harrington Opera House and Bank Block building housed the Bank of Harrington, one of the first banks in the city. The building was designed by local construction firm J.R. Burrill and Company and run by local pioneers John F. Green, Marion F.…

By Billie Slick
The Crosby family moved to Spokane in 1906 when Bing was three years old. They lived in a rental home for seven years, just a few blocks away from this house which they built in 1913. The Crosby home is located at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The…

By John Moudy
The building you are now facing is Showalter Hall, the oldest building on campus dating back to EWU's second incarnation as a teachers college. Throughout the history of EWU its development has been closely linked to the development of the…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
On summer evenings you can come to Coeur d'Alene Park in Browne's Addition, bring a picnic and listen to the sounds of different bands enjoying the shade of a tree while the sun sets. If you visited this park one hundred years earlier you…

By Danielle Mujica
The Benny and Joon house is located at 301 N. Cedar Street in Peaceful Valley. The movie was released in 1993 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The cast of the film included Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Aiden Quinn. Benny and Joon was shot on…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
Most of Manito Park is visible from the top of Loop Drive. Did you ever wonder where Spokane got the land for this park? In 1884, Francis Cook, an early settler of Spokan Falls and a newspaper man who started the Spokan Times in 1879, platted…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
This area of the park has always been a playground area for children, and if you had visited this section in 1910, it might have looked about the same. The playground is at the southern most edge of Manito Park, extending to 25th Street between…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
John W. Duncan was the second park superintendent from 1910 to 1942. The garden is now named for him. It was his vision that created the gardens we see today. Duncan came to Spokane from the Boston Park system and according to Aubrey L. White,…

By Anne Coogan-Gehr
In March of 1896, Eugene Enloe was accused of foul play in the connection with the death of one Hugh Gillighan, who died at Medical Lake with no will, no relatives, and over $12,000 of assets. A letter sent to the Spokesman-Review protested the…

By Ian Reeves
Pioneer Park is comprised of the two residences which occupied the premises. One property, which was owned by D. C. Corbin, featured gardens, both for flowers and food, as well as a small play castle for children. One story that visiting children…

By Danielle Mujica
On November 22, 1949 a barrack was purchased from Geiger Field for a new recreation center in Peaceful Valley. While in transit, the building slid onto the pavement at First and Monroe in downtown Spokane. The equipment had collapsed under the…

By Nikolai Cherny
the Pietsch house, built in 1891 by Franz Pietsch, a German bricklayer, has been one of Peaceful Valley's most adored and unique houses. The house features a unique Italian bricklaying method uncommon in Spokane during the early 1900s, and is…

By Anne Coogan-Gehr
On the lower level of Greenwood Cemetery, near the Spanish American cannon, James "Jimmie" Durkin lays buried under a block of granite. Durkin arrived in Spokane in 1897, 38 years old, with a pile of money and big plans. Spokane was…

By Anne Coogan-Gehr
On the second terrace of Greenwood, Bernhardt Schade, a German immigrant, is buried at the family plot. Schade arrived in Spokane in the late nineteenth century with his Austrian Bohemian wife, Zofia, and was prominent in Spokane's early and…

By Danielle Mujica
The city of Spokane purchased land in Peaceful Valley to build an athletic stadium in 1912. The Stadium boasted a six-lane running track and bleachers that could hold 10,000 spectators. The Stadium was used by local high schools for track meets and…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
The lake before you originally stretched from Division to Grand. First named Mirror Lake, this shallow water feature (between two and five feet deep depending on the season), has been known over the years as Manito Pond, Mirror Pond, and the Duck…

By Tracy L. Rebstock
The Downtown Spokane Rotary Club constructed this cooking shelter in November 1960 at a cost of about $16,000. Dessigned by Henry Bertelsen, Eddy Carlson, and James Architects, It enclosed 2000 square feet, provided table space for 100, and was…

By The Spokane Historical team
The impressive Herculean Pillars standing before you mark the formal entrance to Eastern Washington University. Built in 1915, the pillars were constructed out of salvaged granite from the administration hall which burned down in 1912, and was…

By John Moudy
By the middle of the nineteenth century the Cheney State Normal School continued to expand in spite of the disastrous fire. Only a year after Showalter Hall was built it was apparent that the increasing prominence of the Normal School and the town…