Mullan Road Monument Will Stay Put

Sat., May 13, 2000

By Lorie Hutson lorieh@spokesman.com (509) 459-5446

The monument marking Capt. John Mullan’s route across the Spokane Valley has won a reprieve.

County officials announced this week they will not move the pyramid-shaped marker erected in 1922 near the corner of Sprague and Vista.

“We’ve come up with a solution that leaves the monument exactly where it is,” said assistant county engineer Ross Kelley. “We won’t touch it at all.”

Engineers were going to move the stone-clad monument to make way for a new sidewalk. Kelley said a new plan will extend the curb in front of the monument by about two feet, and build a sidewalk that passes in front of the stone and concrete marker.

“I think anything we would have done to try to move it or try to modify it … would have just destroyed it,” Kelley said.

The plan will narrow the inside lane of Sprague Avenue, but it should not cause a problem because the road will be reconstructed and narrowed to five lanes from seven when it becomes a one-way westbound route later this year as part of the Valley Couplet.

Officials considered pushing the monument back from Sprague Avenue, but the county did not own enough land there for both the monument and a sidewalk. And they could not reach an agreement with landowner Jack Riley to buy enough space for the marker.

Riley refused to sell the land because it would have cut into his already tiny parking area for the restaurant he leases to La Leyenda’s Plantation.

Officials had also considered moving the monument to Plante’s Ferry, where Mullan and his road-building crew crossed the Spokane River. Engineers ruled it out after they cored the monument and determined it was solid. They estimate it weighs about 7 tons.

Other plans called for trimming and reconstructing the front and back of the monument so it would fit on the county land and make room for the sidewalk, or removing the plaque from the marker and putting it in a smaller base.

Riley said he was pleased the county found a way to leave the Mullan Road marker in place. It has become a Spokane Valley landmark, he said.

“That monument is our heritage,” he said. “It needs to stay right where it is.”

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