The only real city in eastern Washington, Spokane (pop. 195,629) feels even bigger than it is, thanks to its location amidst the prosperous agricultural hinterlands of the Columbia River Basin. First established as a fur-trading outpost around 1810, Spokane began to grow when railroads arrived in the 1870s, and has boomed since the advent of irrigation in the 1940s. The second largest city in Washington, and the biggest between Seattle and Minneapolis, Spokane is economically dependent on warehousing and transportation, taking advantage of its busy railroads as well as its location at the junction of US-2, US-395, and I-90.
Though downtown Spokane boasts a number of grand buildings—one recent guidebook called Riverside Street between Jefferson and Lincoln “the loveliest three blocks in the Pacific Northwest”—Spokane really came of age when it hosted the 1974 World’s Fair, for which much of the riverfront was cleared and converted to the attractive, 100-acre Riverfront Park. Designed, but never implemented, by Frederick Law Olmsted a mere century earlier, the park gives good views of tumbling Spokane Falls, which form a deep canyon at the center of downtown. Besides an opera house and a convention center, other remnants of the fair include numerous kiddie rides, a summer-only gondola sky ride (daily; $5) which drops down to the base of the falls, a 1909 Looff carousel ($2) complete with hand-carved wooden horses, and a landmark sandstone clock tower that’s the sole reminder of the Great Northern rail yards that lined the riverfront for most of the previous century.
Riverfront Park is right at the heart of downtown, and a quick walking tour can take in dozens of well-preserved, creatively reused architectural treats, like the Spokane City Hall, which faces the southwest corner of Riverfront Park at 808 Spokane Falls Boulevard—the only government I know of that’s housed in a converted Montgomery Ward department store, a terra-cotta gem dating from 1929. Another worthwhile stop is Auntie’s Bookstore, a full service independent bookstore with a popular café at 402 W. Main Avenue.
Northeast of downtown, across the Spokane River via Division Street (US-2), the best known dropout of Gonzaga University, Bing Crosby, is fondly remembered in a museum in the Crosby Library at the heart of the small campus.
Spokane’s other center of visitor interest is Browne’s Addition, a turn-of-the-century residential district a mile or so west of downtown with many stately homes. The highlight here is the wonderful “MAC,” the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (closed Mon.; $7; 509/456-3931), at 2316 W. First Avenue, which houses the Cheney Cowles collections of artifacts tracing Native American and regional history and culture.
