Margaret Cowles

Pharmacists Joseph Hart and Owen Dilatush were confident they could build Spokane’s next great drug store. Hart had managed a large store in Seattle and worked in William Murgittroyd’s Prescription Annex in the Old National Bank building before the two opened Hart & Dilatush Pharmacy at 9 N. Stevens St. in 1918, near the popular doctors and dentists downtown. When Murgittroyd sold out in 1925, the young newcomers took over the clients of the Prescription Annex. They used direct mail to doctors and dentists to solicit new patients, and pledged to always be cheerful and call customers by name.

From theme parks and backyard campouts to murder mystery dinners, people of all ages can enjoy a well-planned birthday party. Here are some theme birthday ideas as well as location birthdays for all ages, suggested by readers.

A hot summer has translated to record-breaking revenue and admissions at Spokane pools. Capacity crowds day after day at Spokane County pools have caused a budget deficit and necessary staff increases, according to the county. Conversely, a new tracking system shows that both admissions and revenue are up at the pools.

Robert Strahorn was a businessman, writer and promoter who was 25 when he was hired by Jay Gould of the Union Pacific Railroad as a publicist. For several years, Strahorn, along with wife Dell, roamed the Idaho territory by stagecoach and wrote about the beauty and promise of the Western frontier. He helped plan rail routes and invested in townsites by the new tracks. In 1888, Strahorn joined the developers of Fairhaven, a town south of Bellingham that they hoped would be the western terminus of James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad. The deal fell apart when Hill chose Seattle instead. He created a thriving trading business in Boston in the 1890s but decided to move back to Spokane in 1898 to start his own railroad.

It began when five inventors met through Craigslist and reddit. They needed space to create, to build and to inspire others to explore the possibilities of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 and came to Spokane in 1891. It moved around, renting different buildings, until purchasing 245 W. Main Ave. in 1919 for $40,000. The Salvation Army building and the Red Shield Hotel were erected in 1921. The “hotel” provided housing for single men at a nominal fee for almost 60 years. It had 53 rooms available for working and indigent men. The motto promised “soup, soap and salvation” to all.

In the 1890s, a prominent member of the Jewish community in Spokane, Simon Oppenheimer, known as “the biggest man in Spokane,” financed a flour mill and two banks and helped launch Spokane’s economy. In search of capital, Oppenheimer traveled to the Netherlands and secured $300,000 from Dutch banks to finance early Spokane banks and businesses, including the famous Spokane Flour Mill north of the falls, built in 1895.

From 1905 to about 1912, Henry L. Haupt ran one of Spokane’s most popular entertainment venues, The Pfister Bowling and Billiards, a place where a man could get a cigar, a cold beer and a game of pool. Haupt organized statewide and regional bowling tournaments, which led to the founding of the Spokane-based Western Bowling Congress. It was a man’s game, but Haupt advertised almost every day in the newspaper that ladies were welcome. The Pfister produced champion bowling teams and with 16 tables, it was the largest billiard room in Spokane. Despite its popularity, Haupt’s other schemes caused The Pfister to struggle. On the side, Haupt ran Montana Mining, Loan and Investment Co., a penny-stock company that promised a dividend only if a winning stock certificate number came up in a monthly drawing. He was convicted of running a de facto lottery in 1905 and sentenced to pay a fine and serve six months in prison in Montana.

Charles Francis Cole and his son Denzil Howard Cole came to Spokane in 1905. Both became Spokane police officers and spent significant time patrolling and directing traffic on the corner of Riverside and Howard. While a photograph of the first car in Spokane is dated 1888, “traffic” came to include a combination of automobiles, streetcars and horses.

Capt. Thomas W. Symons of the U.S. Engineers Corps was born in 1849 in Keeseville, New York, and attended West Point in 1870. He came west to work on the Columbia River in 1881 and helped shape the foundation of Spokane. As a civil engineer, Symons helped design Spokane’s first power-generating waterways. He bought and lost in the 1889 fire the first Symons Building, at First Avenue and Howard Street, then constructed a two-story brick building in its place. He moved on from Spokane, but his son, Thomas W. Symons Jr., stayed.