Gonzaga Students Clean Pathways At Fish Lake Park

Fish Lake County Park is looking a little neater these days.

Crews of student volunteers from Gonzaga University spent the first weekend in November cleaning up debris and improving foot paths through the park.

Bev Keating, coordinator for the Marshall Community Coalition, said 100 students donated a total of 320 hours in the effort. They hauled away 54 pickup-loads of debris.

A pathway from the park beach to the new Cheney to Fish Lake Trail was lined by hand with basalt stones.

Next year, Spokane County plans to spend $200,000 upgrading the park with restrooms, water lines and a new boat-launch facility. The county plans to seek bids on the work next spring and bring in construction crews in the fall.

The Spokane Walleye Club is donating an 8-by-30-foot fishing dock even though Fish Lake is stocked with trout instead of walleye.

Fish Lake County Park was acquired by the county in 1991 from the Myers family, which for years ran a private resort at the lake.

The property includes a shoreline easement around the entire lake, but the county has no current plans to use the easement, parks officials said.

As part of the park improvements, the county plans to remove an old restroom building along the Cheney-Spokane Road at the lake.

The restroom is at the site of the original county park, but that part of the park is being reclaimed as a natural wetland habitat.

, DataTimes