MAC 100 Stories: A Centennial Exhibition
Tour Description
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.
Locations for Tour
Walla Walla
On April 30, 1806, the Corps of Discovery "took leave of those honest people the Wallahwallahs," Meriwether Lewis noted in his diary. Other important moments of Western settlement in Walla Walla would follow. Protestant missionaries Marcus…
Damming the Columbia
Talk of a Columbia River dam began in arid Ephrata, Washington in 1917, when city leaders met to discuss ways to boost wartime food production. If glacial dams once plugged the river, they argued, why couldn't concrete do the same? A rival…
The Palouse
A homesteader wrote of the Palouse in the 1880s: "Its beauty was wild and untrammeled and the undulating hills were covered with luxuriant grasses." Bunchgrasses and wildflowers created a lush meadow, or Palouse Prairie, in this corner of…
Outdoor Play
"Near Nature. Near Perfect." The tourism motto of Visit Spokane highlights outdoor recreation, an Inland Northwest passion for more than a century. Short winters, dry climate and a yearly average of 260 sunny days entice locals and visitors…
Spokane House
Spokane House was Washington state's first fur-trading post and home to Jaco Finlay, a clerk for the North West Company of Montreal. The son of a Scottish trader and an American Indian "country wife," Finlay prepared a trail across the…
Taking Flight
In 1929, aviator Nick Mamer and mechanic Art Walker held the Spokane Sun-God aloft for five days and nights - America's first nonstop, round-trip transcontinental flight. Refueling in the air was the biggest hurdle. The Sun-God crew caught fuel…
Spokane's Baseball Indians
Spokane's minor league baseball team, known since 1903 as the Spokane Indians, unveiled a new logo in 2006 with the blessing of the Spokane Tribe of Indians. Teams with Indian nicknames, logos, mascots and cheers are often criticized as…
From Temperance to Microbrews
Temperance activist Carrie Nation of Kansas was famous for smashing saloons with a hatchet in the days before Prohibition. Before Nation's 1910 visit to Spokane, the mayor ordered saloon-goers to leave town. Excess consumption and its impact on…
Fresh Air for All
Spokane's basalt outcroppings and deep river gorge captivated Boston landscape designer John Charles Olmsted. His firm, Olmsted Brothers, was instrumental in spreading an urban planning movement called City Beautiful across America. While old…
Trent Alley
In 1913, the east side of Spokane's downtown teemed with small businesses run by Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Greek and German immigrants. Their restaurants, laundries and baths, barber shops, hotels, groceries and pool halls mainly served the…
Expo 74 and the Creation of Riverfront Park
The Spokane River gorge has undergone many transformations in the last century. Don't be distracted by the roar of the falls; look at the riverfront. Until 2011, the trees, shrubs, and concrete remnants you see here were the former YMCA…
Water Power
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…
The Davenport Hotel
The Davenport Hotel was the brainchild of restauranteur/entrepreneur Louis Davenport. Davenport was not a Spokane native, but he found himself in Spokane shortly after the great fire of 1889. Davenport lent his hand to the cleanup and…
Bing & Mildred
Singers Bing Crosby and Mildred Bailey shared humble beginnings in Spokane's jazz scene. Bailey was singing the blues in a popular Los Angeles speakeasy when her brother, Al Rinker, lured Crosby into his Spokane band. Eventually, both Rinker and…
The Fox Theater
The Great Crash in December 1929 left a lasting impact on the American economy--and on Spokane. Plans by Fox West Coast Studios to build a theater had been part of Spokane gossip since 1927. The million dollar project began in 1930, early in the…