1906 fire, blast the show of the century

Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of the burning of the 5,000-seat grandstand at Natatorium Park.

The grandstand, on the east bank of the Spokane River across from Spokane Falls Community College, was the Wrigley Field of the Inland Northwest, an all-wood structure skirted by rough-planked walls and a high awning to shield up to 5,000 spectators.

And on Independence Day 1906, when the temperature in Spokane hit a record 99 degrees, boys playing with firecrackers set the building ablaze minutes after a baseball game ended.

“Had the fire broken out 10 minutes earlier, hundreds would have inevitably been burned or trampled to death,” reported The Spokesman-Review. “Twenty ballplayers were caught in the dressing room under the north end of the grandstand and only managed to escape with their lives by sacrificing clothing and valuables and running at top speed half clad.”

Not everyone left unscathed. W.F. Conner, president of the city baseball league, was in the grandstands tallying game statistics when the fire took off. He told reporters he noticed flames burning through the floorboards a few feet from where he stood. Conner abandoned his score book but grabbed the admission receipts before fleeing.

The fire burned so hot that parkgoers could feel the heat 100 yards away.

Natatorium Park wasn’t a stranger to fire, according to historian Karen DeSelve, though no other known fire at the park compared with the grandstand inferno. DeSelve wrote her college thesis on Natatorium Park.

Records show that the grandstand’s caretakers were so concerned about fire they hosed down the structure before big events like the July 4, 1906, celebration. The venue had been burned before, in 1898 when – also on the Fourth of July – children playing with fireworks were said to have sparked a blaze. That fire, too, destroyed the grandstands, but it didn’t pack the punch of the 1906 fire for one reason: There wasn’t $1,000 worth of fireworks stored beneath the structure.

When the flames from the 1906 fire ignited the fireworks there was a massive explosion. Rockets trailed upward or whistled toward a northern bluff, but generally avoided onlookers.

News accounts suggest the Nat grandstands were a beautiful place to watch a ballgame. The outfield trailed off toward the Spokane River. Opposite the park, on the river’s north bank, rose a tall bluff. When a player’s hickory bat bit perfectly into a hardball’s leather hide, the tiny sphere seemed to sail like a comet into the river.

Beneath the grandstands were the player dressing rooms, accessed by a narrow hallway, which also led to the storage area where, among other things, the park’s sizable stock of display fireworks was kept.News accounts state that $1,000 worth of fireworks was beneath the grandstand that July 4. To put that into a more modern perspective, Liberty Lake will launch about $9,000 worth of fireworks Tuesday for a 20-minute show.

The grandstands were rebuilt, but never to their original grandeur. The third incarnation of the ballpark seated only 2,500. It was abandoned in the 1940s – rundown and largely ignored by a community with professional baseball out in the Spokane Valley and other worthy parks for amateur play.

In 1945 the grandstands burned down for good – intentionally this time, as part of a firefighting exercise.