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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Gambling wheel in Elks Temple has colorful history

Tucked away in a corner between the restaurant and bar at the Elks Temple in Spokane Valley is a unique piece of Spokane’s colorful history.

It’s an enormous gambling wheel, called a Wheel of Fortune, once owned by saloon and hotel owner Dutch Jake Goetz.

At one time the wheel stood in Goetz’s popular restaurant and bar, the Hotel Coeur d’Alene, which still stands at Spokane Falls Boulevard and Howard Street.

As the story goes, Goetz commissioned inmates at Sing Sing Prison in New York to build the wheel for his bar at a cost of $5,000. According to the Elks Lodge, the wheel contains 11 native species of North American wood.

How the game worked is a mystery today; its sequence of numbers is confounding. But apparently the wheel was an integral piece in Goetz’s colorful, free-wheeling world, which included a two-day birthday party every year that attracted hundreds.

Goetz is said to be a charter member of Spokane Elks Temple No. 228, which was formed in 1892.

Shortly after World War I ended in 1918, he donated the wheel to the fraternal organization, which by then occupied a historic building at 1116 W. Riverside Ave. It was moved to the Elks Temple at 2605 N. Robie Road in the Spokane Valley in the late 1990s.

Lodge members don’t pay much attention to the wheel; it has become a familiar part of the décor, said longtime member Jim Hogan.

But, “It’s quite an item,” he said.

Office secretary Darlene Van Slyke said the huge curio is so unique that it’s hard to estimate its worth, but its place in Spokane Elks history is its greatest value.

As such, members are doing their best to protect the wheel, which is about 6 feet in diameter and includes brass fittings and elaborate inlay and artwork. It’s locked down to keep people from taking a spin.

“We don’t use it at all,” Van Slyke said.

For a time in the old days, however, the wheel was put to use to raise money to outfit a drum and bugle corps of younger members, according to the Elks Lodge.

Goetz was born in 1853 in Frankfurt, Germany, as Johann Jacob Goetz and came to the U.S. in 1868 with his father and two brothers, according to a recent story in The Spokesman-Review by Jim Kershner.

He eventually worked his way west, and got into the hospitality business alongside a North Pacific Railway construction camp. He was generous to people who were struggling, and he invited every miner in the Silver Valley to his 1886 wedding.

When Goetz died in 1927, his services were held inside the Lodge Room of the former temple on West Riverside.

According to a write-up on Goetz and the gambling wheel by the Elks Lodge, “Whether he gambled with cards, with money, or in business, he was a born gambler.”

Editor’s note: This article initially had the wrong date for when Dutch Jake Goetz arrived in the United States. It was changed on Jan. 24, 2015 to correct the error.