This day in history: Half of downtown Nespelem destroyed by fire. Businesses opposed proposed doubling of Spokane parking meter rates

From 1975: The Spokane City Council backed down from a plan to raise parking meter rates from 10 cents per hour to 20 cents per hour.

The city’s Retail Trade Bureau “vigorously opposed” the increased rates, on the grounds that it would damage business downtown.

The city had proposed the increase because it needed to come up with new revenue to prevent a serious deficit. The Retail Trade Bureau proposed several other revenue-boosting measures instead of the blanket meter rate increase. The bureau proposed raising rates on meters on the downtown periphery from 5 cents per hour to 10 cents. They also proposed charging money for “parking meter bags,” used to prevent parking in metered spaces for specific purposes.

The city council accepted those compromises.

From 1925: A devastating fire destroyed half of the business district of Nespelem, including the movie theater/dance hall, a general store, a pool hall, the Steel Hotel and a meat market.

The early morning fire apparently started in the meat market, but this baffled investigators because “it is said there has been no fire for weeks in the meat market.”

“Some of the structures were old log structures and the others were frame, the two-story hotel being the only one more than one story high,” said the Chronicle. “… Nespelem is on the south half of the Colville Indian Reservation. … It is a community in which the Indians outnumber the white people and there is an Indian Agency there. Indians and whites are engaged in farming and stock raising, and there is at times a little mining.”

The fire was fought “ineffectively” with one gasoline fire engine and a bucket brigade, the Chronicle reported.