This day in history: A Bicentennial with no bucks? Commission to celebrate America’s birth was scrambling for funds

From 1975: As the nation’s Bicentennial celebration approached, the Spokane American Revolution Bicentennial Commission was woefully underfunded.
And that was an understatement.
“We’ve received two contributions totaling $50,” the commission chairman said.
But the situation wasn’t quite as dire as it sounded, since the commission had received more than $11,000 in federal grants for staff costs. Still, it was in search of revenue to fund its programs, yet to be determined.
They were eying one particular revenue source. The Freedom Train, a special train with displays about American history, was scheduled to visit Spokane. The commission would get 25 cents for each ticket sold.
But nobody knew when the train was going to hit Spokane.
“We can’t sell tickets until the schedule is set,” the chairman lamented.
From 1925: A former Spokane businessman announced an ambitious plan to develop a “$200,000 tourist resort with a two-mile frontage on the Pend Oreille River in the vicinity of Z Canyon.”
He had already presented his plans to the Ione and Newport Chambers of Commerce, and now he announced it to the Spokane Chamber of Commerce’s publicity bureau.
S.H. Anschell was the former operator of a tailor shop in Spokane, and was now the “vice president of a large Chicago candy company.”
He proposed to “improve that portion of the country from the Pend Oreille River down toward the Columbia River.” The site bordered the town of Metaline Falls.

From the chemical beat: The Spokane Daily Chronicle had captured the action it reported on a day earlier when it ran frontpage photos of State Agricultural Inspector Nielsen cutting the padlock onto the orchard of R.W. Lakin and the “county spray wagon” spraying arsenate of lead onto his orchard. Lakin had been detained by the sheriff for refusing to allow Lakin to spray his orchard.