Spokane Electric: 1890's-Spokane


April 11, 1890 SF Daily Chronicle

In April of 1890, eight months after the fire, a correspondent from Indiana visits Spokane. His sanguine descriptions are printed in the Spokane Falls Daily Chronicle. (Left)

As 1890 comes to an end, the Spokane Falls Daily Chronicle extolls the virtues of the city.

“The wealth and prosperity of this city, its marvelous and unparalleled growth in the past to its immense and inexhaustible water power. To govern a power of such magnitude, under some circumstances, might baffle engineering skill, but here by the numerous natural divisions made by islands, the control of the vast power is rendered comparatively easy. The power sites are distributed over a large area, affording ample space for mills and factories, and Spokane is destined to become the largest manufacturing and milling city of the Pacific northwest. Through the heart of the city flows the Spokane river, which offers thirty thousand available horse power…” (SF Daily Chronicle, Dec 30, 1890)

Birdseye map of Spokane Falls eleven months after the Great Fire.

WWP acquires Edison Electric Illuminating in 1891. The company’s operations grow and extend from Spokane to neighboring Idaho and the Coeur d’Alene mines.

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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quote about Spokanes from some expert xx
-Miss So-and-So...