Jesse Tinsley

Spokane’s Stone’s Food Stores in the 1930s were a brief moment in the work of the region’s ambitious grocery executives in the 20th century.

The settlement of Dishman is named for businessman Addison T. Dishman, born in 1865. He moved to the Spokane area in 1887 and ran a livery stable in Spokane with his brother until it was lost in the 1889 fire.

The thunderous spring runoff over the Monroe Street Dam on the Spokane River, thrilling visitors to Huntington Park in downtown Spokane, isn’t what Native people of the region or its first settlers saw before 1890, when the dusty settlement was called Spokane Falls and the river was a series of rapids stretching from Division Street to the Monroe Street Dam.

With less than a month to go in the 1952 presidential election, Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, landed his chartered plane in Spokane for a stump speech Oct. 15, 1952. He had served as the secretary of the Navy during World War II, but now he faced Dwight D. Eisenhower, the top general of the war.

At the start of the 20th century, the hotels and bars along Front Street, which became Trent Avenue, then was renamed Spokane Falls Boulevard in 1974, served weary train travelers and the railroad workers that labored nearby. After World War II, a few grimy blocks of Front would sometimes be called Spokane’s “skid row.”

American department stores evolved from frontier dry goods dealers in the 1800s into elegant shopping palaces through 20th century and then declined as competition, new management and market forces took their toll.

Spokane has always been known for its support of veterans and the sacrifices made in battle. The high price paid by the nation’s service members led to a monument to Spokane’s war dead.

The two-story building at Argonne Road and East Dalton Avenue in Millwood was built by George Brown in 1925 to house a pharmacy. Elbert Tiffin, a longtime druggist with locations in Spokane and around the region, took over the storefront. The Tiffin Pharmacy would eventually be called the Millwood Pharmacy after the town, incorporated in 1928, that grew up around the Inland Empire Paper Company mill across the street.

Friendships forged in military service have often led veterans to form fraternal groups. Two national examples are the Veterans of Foreign Wars, formed in 1898 for the veterans of the Spanish-American War, and the American Legion, formed in 1919 for the veterans returning from World War I.

Only a few months before the Great Fire of 1889, Washington Water Power – now called Avista – was formed by a group of Spokane businessmen to make electricity from the Spokane River.

Armistice Day in 1930 brought a massive crowd to downtown Spokane to see the unveiling of the Abraham Lincoln statue at Main Avenue and Monroe Street. It had been a long time coming.

The corner of Sprague Avenue and Park Road was home to early tire factories until the 1920s, then was followed by a business combining war and peas.

In 1940, the people of the United States were hearing reports of devastating German attacks on Britain and looking for ways to send relief. It was a year before there would be direct U.S. involvement in Europe.

Two miles north of downtown Spokane and a few blocks off of Division Street, the area of Corbin Park was largely undeveloped in the 1880s and was used by the Washington and Idaho Fair Association for an annual fair and for horse racing.

At the turn of the 20th century, Spokane was booming and public schools were bursting at the seams. Also growing were the number of students, because of developmental delays or disabilities, assigned to “special classes.” The Spokane school district, organized in 1899, built the first school for special classes, the Eugene Field School, in 1902 at the defunct Spokane College in the area of what is now Kendall Yards.

Lawrence “Dutch” Groshoff was born around 1903 and grew up in Spokane’s Catholic schools, showing a talent for music at a young age as he learned piano, guitar and banjo. He would become friends with classmate Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby.

After World War II, Spokane boomed with new retail centers starting in the 1950s. It drew established downtown stores to suburban shopping centers like NorthTown and University City.

In a 2005 Spokesman-Review story, Ross Taylor, of Spokane, talked about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, when working class boys often relished the prospect of a fistfight. He said the Top Hat Drive-In, 2101 E. Sprague Ave., was where many fights started or concluded. The East Central hangout was one of Spokane’s first drive-in restaurants, where uniformed car hops served food on trays that hung on the passenger windows.

On Monday, Oct. 6, 1952, the private train “Eisenhower Express,” carrying Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie, rolled into the Great Northern Railway depot in downtown Spokane. Just a month before Election Day, the general got out for a quick speech, striding past rows of Boy Scouts standing at attention at the station.

In 1936, the Great Depression had taken its toll on retail business. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce’s Retail Trade Bureau created a new holiday to spur shopping: Inland Empire Days.

In the wake of the devastating 1889 fire in downtown Spokane, a group of partners bought a partially completed warehouse and hurriedly turned it into the five-story Hotel Spokane, one of the grandest built in the city. The Spokane Falls Review newspaper reported that, in February 1890, 150 workers were at the site, furiously trying to get the 200-room hotel open just months after the fire had turned more than 30 city blocks into blackened rubble.

While the Spokane River slowed north- and south-bound travel in early Spokane, Latah Creek also presented a challenge to the east-west flow of traffic. The creek was once commonly called Hangman Creek, a macabre reference to the execution of Native leaders by the U.S. Army under the direction of General George Wright in 1858.

An 1890s-era building at 808 E. Sprague Ave. housed many different businesses.

Spokane’s first generation of successful business leaders left behind a handful of spectacular private homes, such as those owned by Patsy Clark Amasa Campbell and Daniel Corbin.