Railroad Boom Built Spokane's Brick-and-Stone Downtown
A pioneer revisits Eastern Washington's boomtown and marvels at its rapid transformation from a frontier hamlet to a bustling metropolis powered by the falls.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is a significant fact that the oldest towns and cities in this state are today the most obscure. Not until 1880 were others found courageous enough to venture to locate in the forbidden region of Eastern Washington. When the Northern Pacific railroad was completed in 1883, news reached us of the large influx of emigrants and the rapid development of Eastern Washington. Four years ago, I was one of the members of the Washington Press Association who were so fortunate as to be the guests of the city of Spokane. Instead of the crude, imperfectly built town so common in new countries, here was a city with scores of large and substantial brick and stone business houses, institutions of learning, churches, hospitals, and street railways. In less than one year after that visit, this remarkable city was destroyed by a terrible fire. In the short period intervening, it has been rebuilt on a larger scale than before. I think there are now more buildings of that class in Spokane than in Seattle. The electric lights of Spokane are better than those of Seattle or Tacoma, for the reason that the machinery there derives its power from the water of the falls instead of steam. There is no flickering of the light, but one steady glow. Spokane now claims a population double that of four years ago.
“I felt very much as Rip Van Winkle may be supposed to have felt when he awoke from his twenty years' sleep and found a bustling and populous city occupying the hamlet in which he had his home.”
This article captures the post-1889 fire obsession with urban 'permanence' that defined Seattle and Spokane’s reconstruction. Today, Spokane's reliance on hydroelectric power from the Spokane Falls remains a cornerstone of its civic identity, though the city has long since outgrown the rivalry with Seattle's steam-powered grid described here.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.