The Town That Grew on Nerve and Water Power
A visitor marvels at Spokane Falls in 1883, where brick blocks, a flouring mill and two colleges were rising on pure booster confidence.
(Correspondence Walla Walla Union.)
For a live city with unlimited faith in what the future will bring it, commend me to Spokane Falls. Everybody has asked for three years what keeps this place up, but the answer invariably is, "I don't know, but the d—— place will grow;" and it does grow, too. One instinctively feels that he is in a good locality directly he arrives; there is a confidence, vim and energy about the place and people that inspire confidence in others. It is well situated, for one thing, on the great transcontinental line, and can be made a central point for all that extensive country to the north and south which is a young empire in itself, and the water power, on which all the present opinion of the future is based, is, in my humble opinion, second to its situation as a railroad center. The hotels are also very good, and that helps considerably.
The population consists of a great proportion of young, energetic, go-ahead men, and if they fail in making Spokane Falls a place of importance, I will give up my ideas of what well directed energy will perform. The amount of substantial building going on is something wonderful for so young a town; but I have been very reliably informed that the buildings are not going up on credit, but that the owners can complete them and pay for them when finished. The following citizens are now interested in building a brick block 142x80 feet, with a basement under the whole: F. B. Monroe & Co., E. B. Hyde, B. W. Forreot and Dr. J. E. Gandy. A two-story brick, 24x60 feet, is being erected by L. W. Kima; a one-story, 18x40, by S. C. Hyde; a two-story brick, 34x60, by H. French, and another by J. J. Brown and Geo. Brandt. Our young fellow townsman, Charles Boyer, is in with E. H. Jamison and Wolverton Bros., erecting a two-story brick 24x60 feet. A large flouring mill 50x100 and six stories is looming up and becoming a center of attraction; also an elevator, 30x70, with a capacity of 40,000 bushels of wheat. The Methodist College and the Catholic College, the latter of brick, 50x100 feet and three stories high, are also being pushed ahead. These, with a public school to cost $8,000, and about 50 private residences costing from $600 to $2,000 each, complete the list, and will give some idea of what is going on. I have faith in the future of Spokane Falls, and my estimates are based upon the enterprise of its people as much as upon railroads and the natural resources surrounding it.
Spokane Falls, W.T., July 29.
“Everybody has asked for three years what keeps this place up, but the answer invariably is, "I don't know, but the d—— place will grow;" and it does grow, too.”
In 1883, Spokane Falls was selling itself on railroads, water power and the sheer confidence of young men with hammers. That same booster logic — build first, brag louder, trust the future — still shapes how Washington cities argue about growth, housing and infrastructure. The builders' names have faded, but the civic sales pitch is instantly recognizable.
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