100 years ago in the Northwest: The region was predicted to become a tourism hotspot, and a theater manager met a tragic end after getting fired

A deluge of tourists was predicted for 1923 to flow into in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.

How many? A million, according to Herbert Cuthbert, executive secretary of the Pacific Northwest Tourist Association.

This was virtually a sure thing, Cuthbert said. Unlike other industries, “tourist travel is a sure asset of the Northwest.”

This influx of tourists would probably come mostly by rail, and all of the railway companies were promoting tourist travel. However, auto tourism was becoming increasingly important to the region’s businesses.

“If other lines of business showed the increase that has been developed in the tourist business in recent years, Washington would be the richest state in the union,” Cuthbert said.

From the suicide beat: E. Clarke Walker, longtime manager of Spokane’s Pantages Theater, shot and killed himself in the theater’s office.

It happened right after a personal representative of Alexander Pantages, the vaudeville circuit’s head, fired Walker “following a six week’s investigation of the theater business here.” Walker then went into his office and shot himself, just before the beginning of the afternoon matinee.

When asked if the investigation had uncovered “any shortage of theater receipts,” the company’s spokesman said he was not at liberty to discuss it.

The manager of the competing Liberty Theater said that Walker’s word “was as good as gold and there never was a finer man.”