A Walking Tour of Spokane, Washington (Look Up, America!

A Walking Tour of Spokane, Washington (Look Up, America! Series)

There is no better way to see America than on foot. And there is no better way to appreciate what you are looking at than with a walking tour. Whether you are preparing for a road trip or just out to look at your own town in a new way, a downloadable walking tour is ready to explore when you are.

Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. Every tour also includes a quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on American streets.

Spokane wasnâ€™t properly settled until the 1870s. The initial attraction was the lure of water power from the falls in the Spokane River. The first name of the town was Spokan Falls, for the peoples who had lived in the area for thousands of years and the thundering drop in the river. The â€œeâ€™ came along in 1883 and the â€œFallsâ€ were cast overboard in 1893.

The population surged with the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad which coincided with the discovery of gold and silver in the Northern Idaho mining district. Decades later, after the mines played out, the region thrived with wheat production and logging. By that time Spokane had long established itself as the unofficial capital of the Inland Empire that comprised parts of eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana.

Spokaneâ€™s days as a frontier town ended for good on August 4, 1889. During a dry Western year fire broke out that evening just before 6:00 p.m. The cityâ€™s pump station was broken and with no water to fight the blaze firefighters began to dynamite downtown buildings to break the progress of the fire. When the winds died down and the conflagration ended 32 blocks of mostly wooden structures had been destroyed.

In the aftermath Spokane got busy, erecting some 150 buildings in brick and stone in the next few years. The building boom attracted architects and enough buildings were raised by the 1890 Northwest Industrial Exposition that Spokane was said to possess the greatest architectural diversity of any city its size in the country.

Spokane continued to prosper and by 1910 the population crawled over 100,000; the city by the falls was the 48th largest in America. Today Spokane is around the 100th largest city with a population twice that size. Many of the architectural treasures have been torn down but 50% of the downtown area has been tagged with an historic designation.

To explore the architectural wealth of Washingtonâ€™s second largest metropolis our tour of the Lilac City will begin at the seat of government, a building that was never developed with civic duty in mind...
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2018-02-07
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2018-02-07
Format	Kindle eBook

A Walking Tour of Spokane, Washington (Look Up, America! Series)