100 years ago in Spokane: The Valley’s second apple blossom festival became an ‘ingenious’ marketing tool for the area

Hundreds of autos jammed the farm lanes of Otis Orchards and the vicinity for the second annual Spokane Valley Apple Blossom Festival.

People gawked at the carpet of white-and-pink blossoms, covering huge portions of the Spokane Valley. The blossoms “gave a pretty impression of a snow shower.”

And people saw more than apple blossoms.

“The route, logged for the drive, was ingeniously planned and took visitors almost entirely across the valley three times, giving a splendid idea of the wide diversity of agricultural and industrial activity, and of the attractive residential sections,” The Spokesman-Review wrote.

The festival also included a baseball game (Greenacres vs. Vera), and a daredevil display of airplane stunts. At one point, a plane flew right over the baseball diamonds and the pilot unleashed “a sackful of advertising cards.”

“The entire Spokane police force could not have stopped the rush of boys from every side,” as kids scampered onto the field, trying to grab some of the cards.

From the fishing beat: The Spokesman-Review’s fishing report was brief and to the point: “You can get ’em anywhere.”

Some of the hot spots included the Little Pend Oreille lakes, where three fishermen reported catching 50 trout – each.

From the radio beat: Radio mania was sweeping the region, and the paper printed a handy guide to the basic principles of radio transmitting and receiving. It also reported on a promising new development: a gadget that you could plug into your household socket that would dispense with the necessity of outside aerials.