Spokane Electric: 1885-Spokane

The first electricity comes to the Spokane Falls when George Fitch buys one of the generators – an arc Brush dynamo – from the steamship S.S. Columbia built by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and launched in 1890 operating between Portland and San Francisco. On September 2, 1885, Fitch applies and is approved for a franchise from the Spokane Falls town council to furnish electricity and install 10 arc lights in the business district. An 11^th light is added on the north side of the river.

Electric arc lights had harsh and brilliant light and were best used for public areas. The use of Brush electric arc lights spread quickly. The Scientific American reported in 1881 that the system was being used with around 6,000 lights throughout the U.S.

Learn more about Brush Electric Arc Lights

How the Incandescent Light Bulb and Electricity Transform a Frontier Town

In the late 19^th century, electrification was transforming American cities. Electricity, along with railroads and the telegraph, were reshaping the American landscape. Contemporaries saw these as emblematic of intellectualism, nationalism, and civilization. These were the symbols of American progress, destiny made manifest. John Gast popularized attitudes in his 1863 painting American Progress, where Columbia advances west, flanked by the railroad, a coil of telegraph wire over one arm, and bringing light from the east behind her.

About Spokane, Washington

The Spokane River, and its spectacular series of falls, sustained Native American tribes for centuries. In the 1810s, the Spokane River served an important post for fur traders, both British and American. White settlers were attracted to the river and began settling around the falls of the Spokane River in the 1870s. James Glover, often labeled as the city’s founding father, filed the first town plat in 1878 and enthusiastically promoted the city and his business interests for forty years.

The Washington Territorial legislature granted a city charter and Spokane Falls was official, incorporated in 1881. The 1880s were a boom period for the Pacific Northwest. Three Washington Territory towns competed for prominence. In 1880, Walla Walla, population 3,588, was the largest city barely beating out Seattle’s population of 3,533. Coming in third was Spokane with a population of 350 but that was followed by tremendous growth. Mining booms in nearby northern Idaho in 1883 and north into Canada, farmers settling the fertile Palouse to the south, and abundant forest for lumbering, made Spokane Falls the major center of a new region – the inland Northwest. As railroads looked to connect Chicago and Minneapolis to Seattle, Spokane became a hub for 3 major railroads.

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