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 Lakes.

Streetcar lines appeared in Spokane from about 1890 to the late 1920s. Interurban lines were popular to get people from one place to another within the city but soon rail lines were built to take Spokane residents to places outside the city. J. P. Graves and other businessmen in Spokane built the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene interurban line that went from Coeur d'Alene to the growing wheat towns in the Palouse through Spokane. Included on this line were destination spots like Hayden, Coeur d'Alene, and Liberty Lakes.

The trail is named for Ben Burr because of his work with the Great Northern Railway for forty-eight years. There is a park at 43rd and Havanna also named for him as well as a Ben Burr Boulevard that crosses Freya between 14th and 15th Avenues.

The Ben Burr Trail runs between Underhill and Liberty Parks and is one mile long.

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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 famous landscape architects, the Olmsted Brothers to help design and make recommendations for Spokane's parks, parkways, and play fields. "Spokane's Civic Horse Trader," one man park board, gardener, early Spokane pioneer, president of a "City Beautiful" organization called the 150,000 club, and garden editor for the Spokeman Review are just a few of the many hats worn by Aubrey L. White during his life in Spokane. He served as the first park board president in Spokane from 1907 to 1922. Once he left the park board his work did not end. He worked tirelessly to secure land around Mt. Spokane and the Bowl and Pitcher area.

In his own words, "early parks were a little more than groves where the citizens might picnic on a holiday...nobody expected more of the park than space, shade, and a cool breeze now and then...we campaigned the city, showing the actual value of the parks, pointing out the desirability of playgrounds situated within walking distance of every Spokane home, indicating the added beauty of boulevards to residence districts."

Because of his desire to see parklands along the Spokane River a drive in Riverside State Park is named for Aubrey L. White and winds along the Spokane River with breath-taking views of the river and the surrounding hills, trees, and cliffs.

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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 luring unemployed men and women to the mining school. The school was scheduled to open on June 9th, 1932. There was no cost to attend the school, but after the school was complete the prospectors would have to pay their own way.

On the 10th of June the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported that there was 2000 men and women who attended the school. Lectures were held at the Civics buildings and hands on training took place in Peaceful Valley on the riverbank. Instructors showed the students how to pan for gold and operate mining equipment.

The purpose of the mining school was to train unemployed men and women to go out into the hillsides of Montana, Idaho, Washington and British Columbia to pan for gold. A craze swept over the area as a result of the mining school. Mining suppliers quickly sold out of pans as a result. Gold fever had struck the citizens of Spokane. Thousands of men and women set out in hopes of finding gold. Despite their enthusiasm, there was little gold to be found.

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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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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. The company also produced paving bricks, many of which are still in place on South Hill streets, though now covered with asphalt. The clay soon ran out, however, and the brickyard closed, leaving a shallow depression behind.

The park was originally named Adams Park because the land was owned by John Quincy Adams' grandson. It was changed to Cannon Hill Park for A. M. Cannon, local banker and real estate developer.

When the Olmsted Brothers came to Spokane in 1907, they left Spokane with a design complete with a stone shelter, two pergolas, and a children's wading pool. The wading pool was easy to construct as the depression left by the brickyard left a natural pool, shallow enough to play in to cool off in the summer and freeze for ice skating in the winter. It was recommended in the Olmsted Brothers' report that, "this park should be refined and pretty and adapted to quiet recreation on the assumption that the larger boys of the neighborhood can easily walk to Manito Park for ball games and other sports."

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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 city attracted by mining, railroad, and timber opportunities. People came to make their fortune, and others came to leverage a fortune they already had. The small city cemeteries, once on the edges of town, had been rolled over by development and were strained by a population that threatened their capacity.

Established in 1888 and designed on some of Europe's great Victorian garden cemeteries, Greenwood was a place for the general public to enjoy refined outdoor family leisure. Developed as domesticated landscape with natural features including paths, a water fall, spring fed fountains, and serpentine roads winding along natural contours of the land, Greenwood was no less than the grand vision of the young city itself.

The first burial in Greenwood is that of Mrs. H.F. Nothbohm, on July 1, 1888. About fifty bodies exhumed from the old Mountain View Cemetery located in Cannon's Addition on the lower South Hill, were moved to Greenwood, along with a number of bodies from the Moran Prairie Cemetery, the pioneers cemetery in Spokane.

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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 Plains.

In 1810, the North West Company sent fur trappers to establish a small trading post. Missionaries, settlers, and miners followed, cutting a path of disease, displacement, and cultural change for the Indians. Smallpox and measles ravaged the tribes in multiple outbreaks in the early and middle 19th century.

The Washington Territory was established in 1853. After a failed treaty effort with the Spokans, Colonel George Wright was sent with 700 men to contain the tribe, and in an 1858 battle at Four Lakes, the native alliance was defeated and the Indians subjugated to white authority.

Chief Garry, whose Spokan name was Slough-Keetcha, was born in 1811 and sent at age 14 to one of the first Indian boarding schools in southern Manitoba. His name, like the name of other Indian children taken into the white system, was a combination of their tribal name and the last name of a prominent Hudson's Bay Company officer. On his return, Chief Garry instructed area Indians in Protestant ways, taught farming, and acted as interpreter between white settlers and natives. Chief Garry survived the Indian wars of the 1850s, the dislocations of the 1860s and later, and quietly farmed until his death in January, 1892, dying of "congestion of the lungs" in his teepee in Indian Canyon.

Slough Keetcha was originally buried in the untended portion of the cemetery, and the city paid for burial costs. In 1925, this memorial was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Today the name of Spokane Garry appears on city parks, various memorials, and a middle school.

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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 Home, and the two became synonymous with the business of death in Spokane. Peaceful Valley, secluded and seldom visited in those days, was an ideal location for the company. Although it was a behind the scenes player, the casket company, which employed thirty people less than two decades after its founding, was not only "inseparably linked... with the prosperity of Spokane," but was socially and economically important in the larger context of eastern Washington.

The boom lasted through the 1960s, but the Spokane Casket Company's business declined after that, and it finally closed its doors in 1999. In early 2001, after over a century of continuous operation that made it a fixture in Peaceful Valley, the remaining structures of the Spokane Casket Company were demolished.

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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 private's pay was only $13 for the first ten years and $18 thereafter, while a second lieutenant earned $140 after 10 years. Officers lived in houses across the parade grounds from the enlisted men's barracks.

In addition to this larger living space, the officers in these homes benefitted from some unique comforts exclusive to their row of houses. Many had quarters for Chinese servants located behind their house.  In some cases however, they lived under the same roof as their employers. The houses also benefited from indoor plumbing with toilets imported from Detroit.  Enlisted troops still used outdoor bathroom areas and pit houses.

Although individual houses populated the row, most of the officers lived in pairs inside the houses. Senior officers like Lieutenant Colonel H. C. Merriam, the commander of the fort for a number of years, dignified by their high rank, were awarded their own individual homes to live in with their families.

Officers wives were not immune from the boring lifestyle that many soldiers of the frontier forts in the late 19th century endured. In many ways, their lives were even more boring. The lack of social events, work, and the use of servants all worked together to confine the officers wives to their households. They were expected to abide by military courtesy as well, so when a higher ranking officer moved into the row, lower ranking officers and their families were expected to move at times in order to make room.

When the Army left Fort Spokane in 1898 to fight in the Spanish American war, they would never return to garrison the outpost again. Instead, it would transition from its military purpose to act a boarding school for Indian children in the region. Some of the officers houses were shipped elsewhere but the bachelor officers quarters was converted into a sanatorium for Indians with tuberculosis.

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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 grain and they would draw people to the village of Spokane Falls. The mill business, though lucrative, was also volatile. Owners made their profits then quickly sold out and moved on. As this doggrel from The Spokesman-Review put it:

"There was Simon, who built him a mill,
And dressed dudish sufficient to kill
On the banks of this stream
Ah it seems like a dream.
He's departed, but it's with us still."

But mills were also literally volatile. Flour and sawdust were both explosive and flammable. This spot was the site of the Spokane Mill Co., which survived the Great Fire of 1889 only to partially burn in 1892. To trap logs coming down the Spokane River, the mill companies filled the southern channel with earth.

Electricity in Spokane began in 1885 with a single generator in the Spokane Flour Mill. Demand grew rapidly, and four years later local investors formed Washington Water Power and built a power station near Monroe Street. The company ran electric streetcars to encourage residential expansion and grow the market for electricity. By 1920, Washington Water Power had electrified the Hillyard rail yards, built a 100-mile transmission line to the mines and constructed three dams along the Spokane River. Electrification brought enormous social and economic progress, but the dams that generated that power permanently altered the landscape and the fishing traditions of the Plateau tribes.

Harnessing the river defined Spokane as a community before, during and after the mining and railroad booms. In 1897, The Spokesman-Review asked its readers to celebrate the Spokane River in verse, and even the most satirical poems lauded the manifest and majestic power of the falls.

As years of European-American settlement passed into decades, the edge of the river became encrusted by businesses that depended on its power and water. Spokane was enriched by its namesake river, but only sometimes remembered it.

MAC 100 Stories: A Centennial Exhibition is told on the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture campus in Spokane's Browne's Addition, with additional highlights at 15 sites in Spokane and eastern Washington. The exhibit experience (February 22, 2014 - January 2016) weaves stories and programs about Inland Northwest people, places and events by capitalizing on the MAC's extraordinary collection. www.northwestmuseum.org

Spokane Historical presents 15 regional and city tours in partnership with the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture and its 100 Stories exhibition.

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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. Adams and Albert G Mitchum. The building opened in December of 1904 and housed a bank, a bowling alley, a barber shop, cigar and confectionery shop, the Harrington Citizen newspaper, as well as an upstairs opera house. It cost $25,000 to build the Romanesque brick structure, which used Harrington-made bricks to construct the exterior.

The first show to be produced in the upstairs auditorium was "The Lady Minstrels" on December 16, 1904, and it drew the largest crowd the Opera House would ever see. In the backstage dressing rooms, there are names of past actors/ actresses signed on the walls. Such names include the Jolly Entertainers, Miss Clara Gooley, the Odessa Dramatic Club and Harrington High School. When the auditorium opened, it boasted 350 seats but shows normally drew over 400 guests at one time. To this day eight scenic canvases dating back to 1906, created by J.R. Quinn and the Spokane Scenic Studios, still exist. On the back of the canvases there are hand drawn portraits of people, mainly faces of women, and one Native American chief.

The Bank of Harrington remained open until 1969 when it was bought out by Old National Bank and moved a block away to 3rd and Main. When the lobby was being renovated, the old teller's counter was sold to the Spokane Old Spaghetti Factory where it can be seen today. The old bank lobby became the lobby for the Opera House and the old barber shop now acts as the town's historical museum. The building was bought by the Harrington Opera House Society when they were formed on January 11, 1992, for one dollar. The sale was facilitated by local retired college professor Douglass Rudkoff and other members of the Society, which has been maintaining the building ever since. When the building was bought, the South facing exterior wall was sagging and needed to be repaired. The repairs are not very noticeable but make the building more stable. A new staircase was installed in 2008 in order to connect the main bank lobby and the upstairs auditorium and stay up to fire code. The ceiling of the auditorium was also replaced in 2010.

Over the years there have been a wide variety of events held at the Harrington Opera House. The infamous movie "Birth of a Nation" was shown in the Opera House in 1917 as well as "The Gay Deceiver" in 1926. The off- Broadway production of "The Imprudent Young Couple" written in 1895 made a stop in Harrington and it's playbill is hanging in the lobby to this day. The most common events that took place in the auditorium were balls and dances. The last event planned at the Opera House, a Valentine's Day dance, was scheduled for February of 1942, but it was canceled due to "the war and weather conditions." The decorations from that dance were not taken down until the buildings eventual sale in 1992.

Today the Opera House stands restored and again hosts a variety of events, from town meetings to concerts. It remains the cultural center of Harrington and is an important element in the town's revitalization efforts.

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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 house in now part of the Gonzaga University Campus, and is known as the Crosby Alumni House.

Harry Lillis (Bing) Crosby was born in Tacoma, Washington, on May 3, 1903. Harry was the fourth of seven children in a family that included four boys and two girls. Bing's father was Harry Lowe Crosby and his mother was Catherine Harrigan.

In 1910, when Harry was seven, one of his friends began calling him "Bingo" from a local newspaper comic strip. The nickname was eventually shortened to Bing, and from that time on, he was called Bing by everyone but his mother.

In 1912, Bing was playing baseball for Webster Grade School, and he made his theatrical debut at North Central High School.

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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 local area.

Washington Territory became Washington State In November, 1889, which precipitated rapid growth in the eastern region. Before long Spokane County began to coalesce, and the residents of Cheney in particular intended their town to be the county seat and biggest settlement. By 1889, however, Cheney had lost the competition to Spokane Falls (renamed Spokane in 1891). Nevertheless, the increase in population came along with a demand for more school teachers.

Beginning in the 1880s, the territorial government began to plan a new teachers' college for Eastern Washington. At the time, most places in the United States had established Normal Schools, institutions the sole purpose of which were training school teachers. Organizers chose the site of the recently-defunct Benjamin P. Cheney academy building in1890 and classes began immediately. Unfortunately, a fire of unknown cause consumed it in 1891, but the Normal School reopened later that year after temporary headquarters were found. Two new structures (an administration building and teacher training building) were added by 1896 and 1908 respectively.

In 1912 the original administration building was destroyed in a second fire and was replaced by Showalter Hall in 1915. The teacher training building was demolished in 1940.

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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 could have done the same thing. This park has the distinction of being the first public park in Spokane. Donated to the city by A, M. Cannon and his wife Jennie (the south half) and J. J. Browne (the north half), this park marked the beginning of suburbia for Spokane.

On March 18, 1896, an article ran in the Spokane Daily Chronicle with the headline, "May Close the Park." The park commission had been hassled by residents to make the park beautiful but with low funds and vandalism. After improvements had been made and once the snow melted and revealed, "the small boys had been there. They clambered over the barriers at the gates; they had pulled the pickets from the fence and crawled through; they had gone in anyway to get in. They had plugged the artisan little lake full of old books, retired shoes, deceased cats, and tomato cans with labels, long since out of print." The article listed several other pieces of destruction and the park commission's frustration with putting money into the park only to have it all destroyed.

The park did not close. A 20x20 bandstand was constructed followed by the planting of the state flower, the rhododendron, and a couple of large flowerpots came from the World's Expo in Chicago. During the City Beautiful movement the 150,000 club enhanced the simple park with lawn plantings, ornamental shrubbery, a fish pond, rustic gazebo, and a fancy onion shaped band pavilion. Tennis courts and horse shoe pits were also built in the park. Today the park is enjoyed by people of all ages.

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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 location in Spokane. Scenes in this movie depict well known landmarks in Spokane such as River Front Park, the Maple street bridge and Ferguson's Cafe in the Garland district.
Benny and Joon was not the first major motion picture to be filmed in Spokane. Fool's Gold, which was filmed in 1919, was Spokane's first brush with Hollywood. Since this time over 50 films have been shot in Spokane. Hollywood actors such as Cuba Gooding Jr., John Travolta, and Robin Williams have graced Spokane with their presence.

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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 the property on the South Hill thinking of the money to be made from the wooded and hilly area, perfect for fine residences. Cook was a man of many firsts: he brought the first Italian bees, used the first steam drill, and organized the first agricultural fair north of the Snake River. Cook purchased the forty acres where the Cathedral of St. John now stands and two years later purchased the 160 acres that included Manito park.

Francis Cook named this area Montrose Park for the wild roses that grew here. In 1888 the first horse-powered trolley came up Grand Blvd; a few months later Cook had a streetcar powered by steam bringing people up the South Hill with his Spokan Falls and Montrose Motor Railroad Company. They would get off at 14th street and walk the remaining distance to the park with their picnic baskets on sunny afternoons.

Unfortunately, Cook lost his house and land in the depression of 1893, and other parties quickly snapped it up. The new owners (Spokane Washington Improvement Company, Spokane and Montrose Motor Company, the Washington Water and Power Company, Hypotheek Bank, and E.P. Hogan) decided to give the ninety acres where Manito Park sits to the City of Spokane providing they run roads and water to the South Hill. The City dedicated Manito Park in 1904.

The loop bridge was built in 1930 and reflects the style of buildings on the property at that time.

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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 Tekoa and Division. People without children seldom visit this section of the park.

In the early days there wasn't money for park equipment for children to play on. Charles Balzer, the park's first superintendent, built a swing set using power poles. His son remembers his father giving away free ice cream one weekend to show park officials the need for playground equipment. There were lines of children waiting to swing on the only two swings in the park.

In the 1913 Report of the Board of Park Commissions, John W. Duncan reported the fields were seeded and graded and ready for playfield purposes. Four new tennis courts were added to the two existing ones at 17th and Grand, and a bowling green put in. Occasionally Manito Park would host tennis tournaments on these courts, which were paved in 1926.

Over the years, the Parks Board added new pieces of playground equipment. The playground had a wading pool, checkers, horseshoes, softball games, tennis, touch football, swings, slides, and parallel bars. The playground has gone through several transitions through the years but it has always been a popular place for children to come and play. In 2001, the Upper Manito Playground was the first playground in Spokane to install play equipment with a ramp and elevated play areas for children in wheelchairs.

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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, former park board president, "he has been so successful that our parks are now nationally known."

If you look at the photos, you will see that the garden has had a variety of planting schemes, but the essential architecture has remained the same.The garden was designed in a classical European Renaissance style with bilateral symmetry, a central water feature, and geometrical planting beds.

"I do not suppose there is a single thing in our city that has been taken in as many snap shots as the sunken gardens," wrote Aubrey L. White in 1928. This has not changed. Every year volunteers help the Friends of Manito plant the Duncan Garden that attracts several visitors each year.

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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 appointment of Eugene Enloe as adminstrator for the dead man, accusing Enloe of having burned the dead man's papers and alleging that the deceased had an outstanding note against Enloe for $2,000.

The letter, an apparent forgery, was written in a scrawling hand and the 23 signatures attached had evidently been written by a single person. One name, that of Dr. J. M. Semple, superintendent of the Medical Lake asylum, was immediately discounted by Semple in this reply, "I thank you for sending the communication purporting to be a petition to the court concerning Mr. Eugene Enloe. The writer had no authority to use my name, and I presume many, if not all, of the other sugnatures are forgeries. Mr. Enloe has evidently incurrred the spite of some one who is blind to the danger of attaching the names of others, without their knowledge or consent, to libelous article of that kind."

Eugene Enloe lived most of his life in Medical Lake, a little town hoping for the boom. Starting as a baker, branching into merchantile, then capitalizing in electricity, real estate, railroads, and cement, Enloe invested his money well. In 1926, Enloe purchased the Patrick Clark residence in Browne's addition. Enloe died in 1945, having lived long enough to witness two world wars and make a fortune.

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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 were told was how avid hunter President Theodore Roosevelt had successfully shot a buffalo from a spot on the hill just behind the castle when he visited Spokane.

While this story isn't true, it is true that Teddy Roosevelt did visit Spokane. He was, in fact, a friend of Senator George Turner, who lived next door to Corbin. Turner bought the property after it's original owner, Frank Rockwood Moore, died. Turner expanded the existing hillside garden, and added much to it, making it a popular spot for Spokane's high society social functions.

The Heritage Gardens at Pioneer Park were originally acquired by Spokane Parks and Recreation in 1945. Although the Corbin House and some of the grounds around it were maintained, the majority of the flowers, fruit trees, buildings, and water features which were once found on the grounds were lost to memory and time. The Gardens were rediscovered in the mid 1990's, and public interest led to them being restored and opened to the public.

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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 weight of the structure and the movers were forced to leave it on the pavement overnight. The next morning the building continued its journey to Peaceful Valley.

The narrow entrance into Peaceful Valley caused more problems for the movers. At one point the building was hanging over the embankment and tension was high. The movers finally overcame the obstacle and the new recreation center arrived at its new home otherwise unharmed.

The center was funded by the Junior League of Spokane. Their dream was to give the children of Peaceful Valley a safe place to play and learn.The much anticipated recreation center was open to the public on June 9th, 1950. Activities including arts and crafts and outdoor games were offered to the residents of the Valley. The center became a common ground in Peaceful Valley. Meetings and potluck dinners helped knit the community together. In this center the citizens of the Valley had a voice and could discuss concerns and issues.

Today, the recreation center is still a thriving part of the Peaceful Valley community. The center is now call the Lower Falls Community Center. Outreach programs are offered to many people from all walks of life. There is a children's program that is free of charge and offers after school activities including structured study time, crafts and outings. The center also operates a food bank on Friday mornings called Enough to Eat, and a free clothing program.

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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 the oldest single-family residence in Peaceful Valley.

Franz Pietsch lived in the home until his death in 1913, after which various members of the Pietsch family occupied it until 1929. From 1929 until 1960 the house sat vacant and deteriorated badly. By 1997, after over three decades of fighting in Probate court, the Pietsch was added to the historic register and became the object of restoration efforts. By Mothers' Day, 2003, new owners had revived the old house and were holding tours.

The Pietsch House demonstrates that Peaceful Valley was home to talented individuals who left their creative mark both on this neighborhood and on Spokane as a whole.

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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 booming and thirsty, and Durkin, fresh from an earlier liquor venture in Colville, was ready to compete. Competing with over 120 liquor establishments already set up in town, Durkin spent $21,500 on a major downtown corner lot at the intersection of Sprague and Wall, mounted huge window displays on his building, and become Spokane's liquor tycoon.

Jimmie Durken's right hand man, the enforcer known as The Colonel, simultaneously managed both the employees and the sometimes unruly drinking crowd. The dignified, white haired gentleman kept unruly language and behavior under control, and drunks were ejected from the premises before creating problems. The bartenders were professional and forbidden to drink while on duty. Durkin advertised only the finest liquors, serving to his clientele in the bar and retailing from the store. Known as the "working man's club," Durkin's was able to offer drinks that were better priced than the competition and in an establishment that was reasonably orderly and reputable.

In mid-December, 1915, with Washington State's prohibition only weeks away, Durkin Liquor Company ran an ad in the Spokane Daily Chronicle. "Durkin's Slaughter of Prices. Starts Monday." A case of Gordon's gin was selling for $13, West Virginia Apple Brandy for $2 a gallon, and a keg of twenty year old Old Crow Bourbon for $27. On December 31, the eve of prohibition, the paper ran an article on the famous Jimmie Durkin and the closing of his business. "Jimmie Durkin, Philosopher and Saloon Man, Quits with Million." Jimmie Durkin died of arteriosclerosis at the age of 75 on July 10, 1934, at Sacred Heart hospital, his wife and four children at his bedside.

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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 vibrant brewing history. Serving for a decade as the brew master at Spokane's New York Brewery, Schade started his own brewery in 1903.

Schade hired the noted Spokane architect Lewis Stritesky to design a facility based on a European brewery. Initial production at the brewery was 35,000 to 40,000 barrels per year. In 1916, four years before national prohibition, Washington State passed a law prohibiting manufacture or sale of alcohol. Schade Brewery diversified by making near beer, a beer with an alcohol content of 0.5 percent. Schade Brewery survived prohibition only briefly until Bernhardt Schade fell ill in 1918 and the plant was idled.

On February 17, 1921, after a long illness after suffering a stroke, Bernhardt Schade shot himself at his home on East 909 Boone Avenue, survived by his wife and six children.

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For more (including 5 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article.

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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 football games. It was also housed fairs, shows and carnivals.

On October 31, 1917 the field was renamed and dedicated to James N. Glover, a founding father of the city of Spokane. A granite monument was dedicated that day and still stands in front of the Community Center.

In 1925 the bleachers were condemned. In 1937 the bleachers were dismantled because they had fallen into disrepair. The high schools purchased their own stadiums and no longer had use for Glover Field.

Today the field is mainly used by the Community Center for outdoor activities.

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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 Pond. In the past, Mirror Pond was more than just an attractive piece of landscape. At the corner of 18th and Division there used to be a canoe rental. There was a dance hall across the lake on the opposite shore. People enjoyed ice skating and hockey in the winter on this lake.

In an advertisement booklet enticing people to move and buy property in this area, the Spokane Washington Improvement Company boasted "Winter Sport on Manito Lake - Healthy Invigorating exercise and perfectly safe as the lake is but two and one half feet deep," with a photograph of ice skaters on the lake.

So, where does the name Manito come from? Manitou is an Algonquian word meaning "great spirit" and may be spelled Manitou or Manito. The Algonquian religion tells of a supernatural power that permeates the earth, and is manifest in everything around us. Most famously it appears in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem, "Hiawatha," in the section called "The Song of Hiawatha." Longfellow writes,

On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,

The poem goes on to relate that Gitche Manito, the Great Uniter, called together all of the Native American tribes to one place.

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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 built with five range units and a double sink. Families, businesses, community organizations and churches all hold special events here.

Picnics have always been a popular part of Manito Park, espcially near the playgrounds and on the hillside near the 18th street entrance. People from all walks of life would spend time in the park with a picnic and their kids. A streetcar would bring them to 10th street and they would walk the rest of the way to Manito, but as the city grew and lines expanded, a streetcar would drop picnickers off just outside the park. So popular was this activity that Charles A. Libby, famous Spokane photographer, took photographs of people picnicking in the park to help advertise the Davenport as a place to purchase a picnic lunch, and promotional literature featured Picnicking to promote the Manito Park Addition as a place to move your family.

According to an ad in the Spokane Daily Chronicle, the presence of the park inflated property values, which limited the type of people who could afford to live around the park. It did not, however, limit the people who could visit the park. The land in front of the picnic shelter would be covered by water during different times of the year until the park installed a drainage system. If you walk up the stairs behind the shelter, take the path to your left and face east, you are looking at the sledding hill. Kids of all ages from the 1900s to present have enjoyed sledding that hill in the winter.

For more (including 5 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article.

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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 replaced by Showalter Hall. Built as a symbol of hope and renewal, these pillars have greeted thousands of students as they made their way up to campus from the train depot in downtown Cheney.

Marking the entrance of the university where College Avenue meets 5th Street, the Pillars of Hercules were the first thing a student would see upon reaching campus. Having walked uphill from downtown Cheney, students would be greeted by faculty and staff members on the walkway from the pillars to the college. This tradition garnered the pathway the name, "hello walk."

As more students arrived by car than train, the pillars became one of several entrances to the university. Although the university has grown and the access to campus has changed, the pillars remain as an important symbol for the school and its students.

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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 of Cheney required a dormitory. The building you are now facing is that dorm.

Called Monroe Hall this is the second oldest building erected on campus. It was completed in the fall of 1916 less than a year after Showalter Hall was completed. In its original form Monroe Hall was designed to hold 90 women and included a social lounge and a large dining room with a kitchen. Monroe Hall continued to be used as a dorm until is was turned into office facilities in 1968. A prominent addition to the exterior of the building was added as part of a renovation in 2000. The dorm was a much needed audition as the Cheney State Normal School was entering a new era of growth and development that would not be interrupted by fire.

Monroe Hall also represented the first time that a prominent faculty members had a building dedicated to them (Showalter Hall would not receive its name until 1940). Benjamin P. Cheney had the original academy named after him but he was a distant benefactor having only made two high profile appearances in the City of Cheney. Showalter Hall was named after Noah David Showalter who was installed as the ninth president of the Cheney State Normal School in 1911 and whose tenure lasted until 1926. Monroe Hall was named after Mary A. Monroe who came to the college in 1913 as a member of the board of trustees, the first woman to serve on the board.

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