On April 4, 1903, residents of Reardan, a small farm town 23 miles west of Spokane, vote to incorporate. The town had been founded in 1889 when the Central Washington Railway arrived and established a station at the site, named after Charles Fairfax Reardan (1854-1914), the line's construction engineer. By 1903 the town has grown sufficiently to be eligible for incorporation. The election results are conclusive: 68 votes in favor, 34 against. The results are submitted to Lincoln County on April 8, 1903, and duly accepted by the Washington Secretary of State on April 14, 1903. The town becomes an incorporated town of the fourth class.
A False Start in 1901 and Incorporation in 1903
This was not Reardan's first attempt to hold an incorporation vote. In February 1901, a group of Reardan citizens presented a petition of incorporation to the Lincoln County commissioners. This proved to be a false start. The petition was tossed out due to an insufficient number of petitioners and due to "the opposition, or at least indifference, of several leading property holders in the town" (Steele and Rose, 170).
Two years later, the situation had changed dramatically. The Lincoln County assessor had conducted a new survey of Reardan's population in 1902, pegging it at 382, which "greatly encouraged the friends of incorporation" (Steele and Rose, 170). A mass meeting was called in January 1903, in which the sentiment was clearly in favor of incorporation. A new petition was circulated and accepted, and the incorporation vote on April 4, 1903, passed conclusively by a two-to-one margin. The results became official on April 14, 1903.
In that same election, Michael F. Moriarty (1857-1911), the president of Reardan's Washington Grain & Milling Company, was voted in as Reardan's first mayor. Mayor Moriarty had arrived from Minnesota in 1889 and soon "became known as one of the most capable and efficient businessmen not only of Reardan but of Lincoln County" (Spokane and the Spokane Country, 268). Also elected were T. G. Stevenson, John Wickham, John Raymer, C. S. Warren and J. C. Driscoll as the town's first councilmen. Reardan held its first town council meeting on April 21, 1903, when it appointed Frank Garber as clerk and treasurer and L. A. Dale as town marshal. W. D. Barnhart was the town's first police judge. A 1956 history of Reardan identified Raymer, Wickham, Moriarty and Stevenson as the "makers" (or founding fathers) of Reardan ("Hardy Folks Built Reardan").
