‘This lake is about creating memories’: Spokane County unveils renovated Bear Lake ahead of bustling summer season

Northern Spokane County residents have a slate of new amenities to enjoy while recreating at Bear Lake Regional Park this summer, if they can manage the crowds likely to swarm the freshly renovated public space.

The Spokane County Commission cut the ribbon on a refreshed Bear Lake Wednesday following an extensive improvement project that shuttered the park to visitors last year.

“This lake is about creating memories,” said Commissioner Josh Kerns, who represents the district the park is in. “My family has spent a lot of time here, walking these paths, playing on the grounds here, enjoying this park, and so many more families will continue to have an even better time here at this park because of these incredible improvements.”

The improvements to the 51-year-old park, nestled off U.S. Highway 2 north of Chattaroy, include renovated restrooms and showers, a new paved roundabout for nonmotorized boat launches and picnic shelters on either side of the lake. There also are three new accessible fishing docks, and improved trails to access them.

Of the $3.4 million worth of work done to the property, the improved swimming access is likely to be the most popular in the coming months. Gone are the dilapidated concrete staircases on the west end of the lake that led directly from grassy banks into the water. They have been replaced with pebble beaches large enough to stretch out on a beach towel.

The beach areas also function as part of the county’s efforts to rehabilitate the shoreline, as they replace much of the area of the shore held up by rock-filled gabion baskets installed in the 1990s that began to fail in recent years. Spokane County Parks, Recreation and Golf Director Doug Chase said shoreline erosion has been a challenge at Bear Lake for a while, and the aging out of past fixes like the baskets provided an opportunity for the county to improve both the environmental health and visitor amenities at the park.

“There’s at least three different sandy beach areas that you can now access over there without gabion baskets that are deteriorating and falling apart and stairs that are not navigable,” Chase said. “All new; it’s amazing.”

Accessibility remains at the forefront of the Bear Lake park experience, just as it was when it was first developed by the county in the 1970s. The Spokane Daily Chronicle reported that the original playground equipment installed in 1977 was designed to serve children of all abilities, a feature that made then-parks director Sam Angrove especially proud.

The new fishing piers are all 10 feet wide with lowered railing slots at regular intervals to ensure the anglers that the lake is open to can make the most of it. The lake has long carried a special designation from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in which only those younger than 15, seniors or anglers with a disability are allowed to fish, which leads to a typically less crowded environment than other fishing spots in the area.

Taz Tassin, a member of the Inland Northwest Disabled Veterans Sports Association, said he expects members to make good use of the more accessible fishing facilities. He said the improvements were inspired in part by their lobbying, after a member of the group fell into the water in his motorized wheelchair when the shore near the dock gave way beneath him.

“He fell into the water upside down, and if his friend wasn’t there to help him out, he would have drowned,” Tassin said.

Tassin was encouraged by the upgraded dock, as well as the addition of a ramp and handicap-designated parking spaces, because it means more disabled veterans will be able to get outdoors. The organization is all about supporting veterans, and recreation with fellow servicemembers can go a long way in helping someone adjust to life back home, Tassin said.

“It helps the mental well-being, and also the physical well-being of a person,” Tassin said. “After years in the military, or war, going from that straight home, some just stay home because you’re afraid to deal with other people or interact with other people. Prior service personnel can help because they have that experience.”

Using mostly state and federal grant funding, Spokane County purchased the park property in 1974 for $205,000 from George E. Mast, who ran a resort on the property and sold it to the county on the condition that it be turned into a park.

Mast wanted to preserve public access to a beautiful spot of land he worked tirelessly to improve, said his daughter, Sally Grafe.

Grafe, 80, now lives in Ohio with her son’s family, but often reflects on the fond memories she made at the lake as a child. Mast took ownership when she was 11, and she and her sister would assist with shaping the wild area by hauling rocks, building fences and driving the tractor.

“I would work with my dad hand in hand, and then I’d go and try to be normal at school wearing a dress,” Grafe said. “We had to wear dresses back then.”

On weekends and throughout the summers, Grafe and her sister would collect 25-cent entry fees and man the shop and boat rentals for the picnickers, anglers and bathers who’d stop by. She said she “remembers everything”: the wildlife encounters, playing Monopoly in the family’s summer home when the weather turned, and watching cars race by from the rock outcropping above the lake’s eastern shore.

“I moved on forward, but lots of good memories on that land,” Grafe said.

A new picnic shelter stands where the house was located, and Grafe said it feels good to know Spokane’s youth can now make their own memories, “use the land and enjoy themselves” in all the same spots she did as a child.

“My mom and dad preserved it so they could share it and not sell it to, say, a real estate broker,” Grafe said. “With that acreage, you could imagine what would have happened to that beautiful area.”

Spokane County Commission Chair Mary Kuney extended her thanks to Grafe and her family on behalf of the county for their good stewardship of the property, and providing the rest of Spokane County with more than five decades of recreation opportunities in the shadow of Mount Spokane.

“When people choose to take private property and put it out there for the community, I get excited,” Kuney said. “Because, otherwise, there’s not that many opportunities. We don’t always have the funds to pay a lot for these things, and if you don’t take advantage, we’ll lose this.”

Expanding real estate holdings with the intent of providing public access can be a challenge for local governments, which is why it’s significant when a property owner makes a move like Mast did. Kuney said it’s an example of why the county’s Conservation Futures program is so important, as the voter-approved 0.0625 property tax secures funding to acquire and preserve properties like the one that became Bear Lake Regional Park.

Kuney also pointed to more recent acquisitions that became recreation areas in part through Conservation Futures funding, like popular field-trip destination the Doris Morisson Learning Center and Saltese Flats Wetland Area, or the “Rimrock to Riverside” plot nestled between Palisades City Park and Riverside State Park.

“To look at what people can do now, and for generations to come, I just think it’s so exciting,” Kuney added, gesturing to the expansive park in front of her.