‘Roosevelt’: Nw Trivia Answer

Northwest history buffs know that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the nation’s largest dam. But few may know he also created the Northwest’s largest national park.

They know the president had polio. But do they know that one of his wheelchairs is on display in central Washington?

Here are some trivia tidbits about the Roosevelt administration and the Pacific Northwest:

FDR signed an order creating Olympic National Park in 1938.

An oak wheelchair the president used during his 1937 visit to Grand Coulee Dam is displayed at the dam’s visitors center.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake was named five days after his death by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. The 151-mile-long lake is the portion of the Columbia River flooded by Grand Coulee Dam.

Although the Delano community near the dam was named for the president, residents pronounce it “Da-LANE-o” instead of “DEL-an-o.”

Many buildings, places and things named Roosevelt in the Northwest were not named for FDR. Instead, they honor his cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt.

They include a Spokane elementary school, a Mount Baker glacier, a town along the Columbia River, a species of elk that lives in coastal mountains and a grove of ancient cedar trees near Priest Lake.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, an FDR creation, employed 10,000 men in 45 camps scattered across Eastern Washington, North Idaho and northwestern Montana. Among the projects: the suspension bridge in the Bowl and Pitcher area of Riverside State Park; Aubrey L. White Parkway in northwest Spokane; Vista House at Mount Spokane; and many trails, buildings and roads near Priest Lake and at Idaho’s Heyburn State Park.

North Idaho hunters hired by the Works Progress Administration shot 53,972 coyotes, 2,504 bobcats, 46 mountain lions and one wolf during the 1930s and early ‘40s.

The WPA put 300 women to work in a Spokane sewing shop in the late 1930s. They made 20,000 garments each month, mostly for needy children, and 41 quilts each day.