December 26, 2011 in City

Then & Now photos: Millwood, oldest city in Valley

Town grew around paper industry
 
Tags:Coeur d’Alene Spokane RailroadJoseph WoodardmillwoodNekoosa-Edwards Paper Co.photosSeth Woodardthen and nowWoodard Station

1941: The view looking north from Millwood was far less congested than it is now.
(Full-size photo)(All photos)

The town of Millwood was orignally named Woodard Station for a train stop on the Coeur d’Alene Spokane Railroad at the edge of Joseph and Seth Woodard’s land. The Woodards were settlers who gave the right-of-way for a new electric train around 1903. A new north-south road, now Argonne Road, and a bridge over the Spokane River allowed people and agricultural goods to reach the train into Spokane. In 1911, the Nekoosa-Edwards Paper Co., of Appleton, Wis., built a mill by the river and began producing paper. The town exploded with the new industry, adding businesses and homes to serve and house the mill’s employees. Its name was changed to Millwood to honor both the mill and the Woodard family. The community of almost 2,000 was the first to incorporate in the Spokane Valley area, in 1928. This year, Inland Empire Paper, owned by the Cowles Co., celebrates 100 years of operation.

On the Web: Find more historical photos with present-day comparisons at spokesman.com/then-and-now.

– Jesse Tinsley

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Seven comments on this story so far. Add yours!

  • D Statler on December 26 at 8:06 a.m.

    Great article :^) Lived out here 50 years and didn’t know all those facts. This also explains the name of West Valley’s school at Park Rd and Mission Ave. “Seth Woodard Elementary” Sounds like this area is deeply indebted to the Woodard family. Your contributions to our Valley will live forever. ThankYou

  • The_Seer on December 26 at 10:12 a.m.

    statler: Indebted? The Woodards got all that land for free. If anyone owes anyone anything…

    This is simply a commercial for Cowles Company and is not news or journalism. The column space could be dedicated to reporting that advance the interests of the truth rather than this drivel. The Spokesman Review didn’t print a single word regarding measures in the new National Defense Authorization Act that allows use of the military in apprehending and detaining indefinitely U.S. citizens while deny them due process and suspending Habeus Corpus.

    Not a word. And instead, we get this.

    Freedom of the press was established in the U.S. so that an aggressive press could be employed to thwart the overreach of power and act in an adversarial “watch-dog” manner in relation to government. This power of the press has been ignored far too long in the U.S., especially by near monopoly media concerns like the Cowles Clan.

  • DHF on December 26 at 10:55 a.m.

    Thanks for the article and picture. Does it bring back memories of what I remember late 40 s and 50s as we lived in Pasadena Park about a block from the bridge. Didn’t have all the houses in Northwood then. Spent a lot of time riding my bike over to Little’s 5 and dime store and swimming under the bridge. Nice Article.

  • westerly on December 26 at 11:41 a.m.

    One of Spokane’s affluent suburbs..

  • zelda on December 26 at 1:00 p.m.

    I once asked an executive who had moved decades later back to Spokane from a large metro area in another state, “Were you surprised by how much Spokane has changed?” He answered, “No. I was surprised by how much it hasn’t changed.”

    Millwood looks like it’s been preserved in amber. The only thing that’s substantially different is the model year of the cars. It’s a semi-picturesque little place — a museum diorama of what a company town looks like. There aren’t many left in the U.S., but this one is still chugging along.

    I’m holding out a tiny bit of hope that Patch.com might get some traction in Spokane. That way we can information that’s not a commercial advertisement disguised as news.

  • zelda on December 26 at 1:13 p.m.

    And then there’s this, which comes from Forbes.com via MSNBC today. Caveat: Forbes has always seemed to have a case of the a** for Spokane, but maybe deservedly so —

    Cities Where Jobs Will (And Won’t) Be in 2012
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45758413/ns/business-forbes_com/

    Des Moines, Iowa comes in third on the list of metro areas with the best hiring outlook, with a net increase of 14 percent. Houston, Texas and Phoenix, Az. also have a net hiring outlook of 14 percent.

    At the other end of the spectrum, Spokane, Wash., Fresno, Calif. and Dayton, Ohio, all have negative hiring outlooks of -4 percent. In Spokane, for instance, 12 percent of employers say they plan to increase hiring, but 16 percent project they will be cutting staff early next year.

  • D Statler on December 26 at 7:46 p.m.

    @ seer, I am not a big Cowles fan either. I can say that Inland Paper is a good family wage providing employer in Spokane. It would be nice if they could keep the doors shut at the mill. Some say it smells like money. I say it just plain smells sometimes :^( I don’t know how the Woodards acquired all the property in the Valley. It was that type of forward thinking to donate land to the railroad that made Spokane the hub to the Silver Valley.
    I did enjoy the before and after pictures. Who says you can’t put a new dress on the old girl?

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