100 years ago in Spokane: It was grate expectations as the Chronicle boasted the city could unseat Tillamook as cheese haven of the Northwest

Spokane was the site of “the biggest cheese factory in the Northwest,” the Hazelwood Co. factory downtown.

“Not even Tillamook, of cheese fame, has a factory that can compare in size with Spokane’s,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported. “One whole carload of milk, 20,000 pounds, is required each day to keep the plant going, and the daily output is 2,500 pounds of fuel-cream cheese.”

Cheese-making was a new industry in Spokane, a Hazelwood official said. The factory had been operating for just a month or so, and was working at full capacity on double shifts.

Why had the company established a plant in Spokane?

Because the region had an abundance of milk, partly because of a “splendid growth of grass” during the spring.

From the Prohibition beat: The net was drawn tighter around Ferry County Sheriff Thomas Barker, deputy Cline Ledgerwood and their fellow defendants in the trial over federal liquor charges.

At least, that’s how the Spokane Daily Chronicle interpreted the testimony of Henry Dappel, a bootlegger turned state’s evidence.

Dappel said he and a partner were double-crossed and robbed by some other bootleggers. When Sheriff Barker and Ledgerwood came to Dappel’s house to investigate, Dappel testified that the sheriff said the following to his deputy: “Why didn’t you report this to me at once? You were getting paid for it, and we might have caught the fellows and got the stuff back for the boys before the robbers got out to town.”