Spokane Electric

A new city in the age of electrification, Spokane was particularly suited to the transforming power of electricity. Railroads had played a central role in the west, promoting new settlement and expanding an economy that silver, gold, copper, lead, wheat, and timber flowed into. However, power was needed to fully capitalize on the new economy and Spokane had a resource. An 1890 Electrical World article said it best, "The remarkable electrical developments in the far west are nowhere more strikingly exhibited than at Spokane Falls. The rapid and phenomenal growth of this city finds its parallel in the growth of its electrical industries, and this is undoubtedly due in great measure to the magnificent water power that the city possesses."

A handful of men were uniquely situated at this crossroads of economic opportunity, technological development, and access to water power. And like the railroads, water power will become entwined with government – securing rights of way, subsidizing, regulating, protecting – and eventually fusing into a public utility.

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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