Then & Now: Mount Spokane Park Drive

Getting to the top of Mount Spokane was a test of strength of will and stamina before there was a road to the top. If you frequent the mountain for hiking, camping, skiing or huckleberry picking, thank Francis H. Cook.

Cook, a pioneer businessman, newspaperman and developer, came to Spokane in 1879 to start the city’s first newspaper, The Spokan Times. He purchased a large tract on the South Hill and laid out a new neighborhood. He started the first motorized streetcar to bring people to his Montrose development, which is now the Manito Park neighborhood. But he lost his fortune in the panic of 1893. Broke and living on a farm in the Wandermere area, he managed to buy a tract on the side of Mount Spokane.

In 1909, he and his son, Silas, began to build a road to Mount Spokane, also called Mount Baldy or Mount Carlton. It took three years, working without heavy equipment, to complete a rough track to within a mile of the peak. Cook charged a 50-cent toll to use the new road.

Just before he died in 1920, Cook put his land and the road under the care of Louis Davenport, who would hold the land until the state took it over in 1927 and named 1,500 acres there as Mount Spokane State Park. The park now is over 13,000 acres.

Cook’s crude road was widened and improved by the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government work program, in the 1930s. The first chair lift for skiing was installed in 1946, making year-round drivability more important. Mount Spokane Park Drive was designated as state Route 206 in 1964. It was paved again in 1985.

–Jesse Tinsley