Construction crews unearth coffin

It may be hard to believe, but there was a Spokane before the neon signs, pavement and traffic jams.

Proof in point – as discovered in the last few days – Division Street may have been built over the graves of early settlers.

On June 3, construction workers found human bones under Division, just north of Interstate 90. And a team sifting through the dirt Friday made an even bigger find: a wooden coffin.

When the four bones were found last week, Spokane Police sent them to EWU anthropology professor Sarah Keller. She determined that two were human arm bones; the other two were animal bones, said police spokesman Dick Cottam.

“We don’t have any reason to believe that this is a crime scene,” said Spokane Police Officer Paul Watson, who was guarding the site Friday night until police volunteers could relieve him. Watson said the volunteers will watch the site to protect it.

Keller and a few EWU students were at the site Friday sifting through the dirt for more bits of Spokane history.

“It was the last couple shovel fulls of the day and they hit wood and dusted it off and determined it was a coffin,” Watson said. “They were very excited. They thought it was very important.”

Keller couldn’t be reached Friday night for comment.

Watson said Keller believes the coffin could be from pioneer times. Earlier in the day, diggers discovered square nails that likely were from that era.

“The wood was really dark and looked like it had been underground awhile,” Watson said.

Division Street was built in the 1880s (and originally named Victoria), said Tony Bamonte, who with his wife Suzanne has written eight books on local history.

Bamonte said much of the land in the area where the coffin was found once belonged to the family of Spokane’s first school teacher, Henry Cowley (the namesake for nearby Cowley Park). Most of the action in Spokane was closer to the falls. The land where Interstate 90 goes through downtown was wilderness.

Spokane’s earliest cemeteries were in Browne’s Addition and Cannon Hill, Bamonte said. But some families – especially those who lived outside of developed areas and farther away from official burial grounds – might have preferred to bury loved ones close by.

“I’m not a history buff, but I find it fascinating,” said Watson, who covered the dig with Visqueen for protection until Keller returns to the site on Sunday morning.