This day in history: A Valley sewer debate and a phony arrest to celebrate a long stagecoach trip

From 1976: A Spokane County commissioner said that a Spokane Valley sewer system was inevitable – “like death and taxes.”

However, neither he nor other county officials were willing to start designing such a system.

“Instead, they unanimously agree that what is desperately needed is further testing of the Spokane aquifer to determine once and for all if it is polluted or in danger of being polluted,” The Spokesman-Review said.

The commissioners “could require new subdivisions in the Valley to have sewers, but they could not force existing subdivisions onto a sewer system without a vote of the people who live there.”

And that, said one county official, was a “politically explosive issue.”

One commissioner conceded that if the aquifer was indeed found to be polluted by sewage, “we can’t get it done soon enough.”

From 1926: Felix Warren, 73, on the last leg of driving “a historic old stagecoach” to Pasco and back, was greeted by a big crowd of dignitaries and well-wishers at High Bridge in Spokane – and then was promptly “arrested for driving over the bridge faster than a walk.”

That was just a joke, however. His 10-day feat was celebrated at the bridge by Kirchner’s Cowboy Band and a large welcoming delegation brought in dozens of autos.

The president of the Spokane Chamber of Commerce said “the stagecoach trip was symbolic of the tragedies, failures and also the successes of pioneers, and ushers in a new era of mail transportation in the Northwest.”

In his younger days, Warren routinely carried the mail to Pasco in his stagecoach, and he said he wanted to do it once more, for old times’ sake. The trip was prompted by the opening of a new airmail route.