Poor Clare Nuns are members of the Franciscan Order of St. Clare, a Roman Catholic order of nuns founded in 1212. In Spokane, the Poor Clare Nuns trace their history to 1914, when six women opened a m...
The White Elephant stores began in Spokane in 1946 when John R. Conley Sr. started selling Army surplus materials before converting his business into a sporting goods store. As he began to welcome the...
Hillyard, known today as a neighborhood in Spokane's northeast quadrant, began as a separate town in 1892. It was built around the Great Northern Railroad's rail yards and named after Great Northern m...
Moran Prairie and Glenrose Prairie, located in what is now southeast Spokane, were favorites of prehistoric American Indians and were populated at an early date by white settlers. The areas were attra...
From the 1880s through the 1940s, a bustling Chinatown -- or to be more accurate, an international district -- thrived in downtown Spokane. It began in the 1880s mostly as a stopping point for Chinese...
The Spokane River is a tributary of the Columbia River, its shores important as a cradle of the oldest known continuously occupied human habitation in present-day Washington. It begins at Lake Coeur d...
The Spokane Stock Exchange operated from 1897 until 1991. It was one of about 200 regional exchanges initially trading in mining shares issued as penny stocks (shares selling below a dollar). Spokane,...
The Spokane Symphony, founded in 1945 under the name Spokane Philharmonic Orchestra, soon evolved into Spokane's premier cultural institution. It was the brainchild of conductor Harold Paul Whelan (19...
Spokane Valley is a suburban city of 89,755 residents (2010 census), in Spokane County between Spokane and the Washington/Idaho border. It occupies the broad, gravelly valley of the Spokane River and ...
World War II drew to a close in 1945, but there remained a great need for hospitals to treat the enormous numbers of veterans that returned home from the conflict. The City of Spokane was chosen as th...
The word "amateur" has acquired a somewhat pejorative connotation in recent times, implying a dabbler who lacks the knowledge or skills of the professional. Yet in earlier days, an amateur was of...
Japanese immigrants first arrived in Eastern Washington during the late 1800s and early 1900s, mostly as railroad workers and mine laborers. Many went back to Japan when the work ran out, yet a signif...
From 1978 to 1981, a rapist who committed as many as 37 brutal assaults kept the city of Spokane terrified. Police scoured the city for the "South Hill rapist" so-named because many of the rapes took ...
From 1888 to 1936, streetcars played a clanging and colorful role in the history of Spokane. The city's first streetcar was pulled down Riverside Avenue by a team of horses. Within two years, steam-po...
John Wilson Sprague was born in the state of New York, became a successful businessman in Ohio, served the Union cause with distinction during the Civil War, and then moved to the Northwest in 1870 as...
Ira Spring had the great good fortune to spend a lifetime doing what he enjoyed most -- hiking, climbing, and skiing throughout the Pacific Northwest and documenting his way in words and pictures. He ...
St. Nicholas School was a private nonsectarian girls' school founded in 1910 and located in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The school was named to honor St. Nicholas, the patron saint of childr...
Though the Irish in Seattle have always celebrated St. Patrick's Day, there was no official St. Patrick's Day Parade in Seattle until 1972. Before (and after) that first official procession, the late ...
Washington state's second-largest logging and lumber operation during its heyday, the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company controlled 90 square miles of standing timber in Pierce County and milled bil...
Before rail service reached the West Coast steamboats, stagecoaches, and wagons were the principal means of transportation to and from the inland areas of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho territories. Go...
John Stanford (1938-1998) was the superintendent of Seattle Schools for just three years and seriously ill during the last few months, but he continued to maintain a high profile in the community as w...
Betty (Batchelor) Miles of Samish Island contributed this piece on Jack W. Stangle, who was a celebrated artist in Seattle from 1953 to his death in 1980. He was a member of the Northwest School and h...
This is an account by Stanley Willhight (b. 1914) of the Willhight family's journey to Vashon Island in 1883. Willhight also recalls the impressive sight of trains in Smith Cove carrying huge bales of...
Richard Hall of Coupeville offers this account of the business his grandfather, Stanton Hall, built in Everett. Stanton Hall later served as a member and as president of the Washington State Universit...