Jesse Tinsley

Stuart Wilson isn’t only remembered for his string of waffle houses. He saw the value of bacon grease – enough to apply for a patent in 1932 that kept it separate from other waste oils. Wilson’s Cafe, now the site of a parking lot, used to serve customers inside the former White’s Hotel at Stevens Street and Sprague Avenue.

Nelson Morris began his work at the family’s meatpacking company, Morris and Co., when the company built a plat at 124 S. Jefferson St. in Spokane in 1911. An airship enthusiast, Morris was aboard the Hindenburg when it exploded above New Jersey in May 1937.

During the Depression, nine business leaders sent out invitations to start a new club where businessmen could network and do public service, not unlike today’s Rotary or Kiwanis. The meetings would take place at breakfast, so it would be called The Early Birds Breakfast Club. For more than 35 years, the club played an important civic and social role in Spokane.

The city’s first public library at 10 S. Cedar St. was quickly outgrown and required a four-story addition. Since the 1960s, it has been used as a nursing college and business offices.

Olaf A. Jacobsen was born in Norway in 1860 and arrived in Spokane in 1888. He started a bakery on the corner of College Avenue and North Ash Street in 1889. The building was also listed as the residence for Olaf and his wife, Mary. For almost a century, Spokane ate bread from the one-story baking plant on the north side.

Earl Hauser, a longtime Hauser Lake pilot, was honored with a pair of awards for 50 blemish-free years as an active pilot and an aircraft mechanic, a combination of experience rarely seen in the world of general aviation.

As early as 1912, when the city hit 100,000 residents, Spokane city leaders desired a civic auditorium for important events.

Established around 1915, the Spokane Union Stockyards was a key piece of the agriculture business in Spokane for more than 80 years.

Twenty-year-old Llewelllyn “Louis” Marks Davenport arrived in Spokane in March of 1889 and helped manage his uncle’s restaurant. When most of the town burned down later that year, Davenport opened his own restaurant in a series of locations before building a two-story brick restaurant at the corner of Sprague Avenue and Post Street in 1900.

William Dexter is graduating from East Valley High School with a 3.9 GPA. He is putting college on hold for a year while he pursues competitive skiing full time.

Groups planning to hold a memorial service for the Navy’s fallen had arranged to have flowers scattered from the Monroe Street Bridge over the Spokane River and a gun salute by an honor guard.

The second-largest dairy in the country began in Spokane with the 1888 arrival of two brothers, George and David Brown.

Miners in the Coeur d’Alene mining district got a boost in pay from $4.25 to $4.75 per shift. The move was announced at a meeting of the principal operators in Wallace, Idaho.

A growing number of school-age children prompted Manito residents to seek a permanent replacement of the “portable” school at 21st Avenue and Hatch Street.

A key chapter in the history of Post Falls Dam begins with Frederick Post, a German immigrant who trained as a millwright and settled in Idaho in 1871.

A motor inn catering to America’s generation of car travelers opened in 1963 on the site of what used to be the historic Spokane Hotel. The Ridpath Motor Inn had underground parking, a pool, 70 rooms and a skywalk across First Avenue.

The teamsters and chauffeurs’ union voted to go on strike after demanding that members of the Spokane and Transfer association agree to wage increases from 50 cents to $1 a day and that all shops be “closed” with jobs open only to union workers.

Fruit trees in the Spokane Valley area were hard hit by late season frost. Reports from Vera, Oppportunity and Greenacres were that damage to pears, peaches and early apples was heavy.

Beset by financial difficulties, Whitworth College closed for the 1918-1919 school year.

A tale of two neighbors: The Granite Block was the result of a massive rebuild after the Great Fire of 1889; the Paulsen Building had roots in the sudden wealth of a man who struck it rich in mining.

The Lang Building was erected on Washington Street in 1891. Most of the downtown buildings in that era were built for ground floor retail space, with a hotel or residence rooms above. But the Lang was built for large meeting rooms, so windows on the sides of the building are taller, and the front windows are stylishly arched to allow light inside. The first listing of the Lang building called it the Grand Army Hall. The Grand Army of the Republic was the fraternal organization for those who served in the Union Army in the Civil War. The first of three G.A.R. posts in Spokane was founded in 1883. The national organization peaked at 490,000 total members in 1890. Eventually there would be posts in every state, even in the South.

The first Great Northern train rolled into Spokane in May 1892, starting a long association between the company and the city. James Jerome Hill, one of the great rail tycoons of the 19th century, put a massive rail yard outside Spokane city limits that would become the biggest rail shop west of the Mississippi. The Hillyard shops produced the most powerful steam engine of the time, the R-1 Mallet.

The Maple Street Bridge, which opened to traffic on July 1, 1958, is 1,716 feet long, towering 125 feet above the Spokane River, and its road surface is 50 feet wide, plus a 5-foot-wide pedestrian path on the southbound side.

Single-room occupancy hotels accommodated downtown Spokane’s booming early 1900s, including the Albany, Regal and Stanford hotels. Rooms had a bed, sink, wardrobe and little else.