When it comes to iconic structures, Manhattan has the Empire State Building. San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge.  Rome, the Coliseum. Boston, Fenway Park. Well, that last one may be debatable, but it got me thinking. If I had to choose one structure that best exemplifies Spokane, what would it be? The Davenport Hotel? River Park Square? The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist? Good choices all, but on further reflection, I decided my vote would go with the Great Northern Clock Tower.

More than a tower, literally:

Both figuratively and literally, Spokane’s clock tower is more than a mere tower. Literally, it was the crowning centerpiece of a larger building, the Great Northern Railroad Depot, completed in 1902. The railroad itself, the Great Northern line, was cobbled together by James J. Hill, nicknamed the Empire Builder. It made its way westward from St. Paul, Minnesota, arriving in Spokane in the early 1890s (more about Hill in a future blog). Though not the first railroad to reach Spokane – the Northern Pacific arrived in early 1880s – it was without doubt a major contributor to the town’s growth.

Courtesy MAC archives

A great railroad needed an impressive depot, and $150,000 went into making Spokane’s depot the finest west of Chicago. A sturdy brick and sandstone building of three stories, it was situated on Havermale Island in the middle of the Spokane River. According to the Spokane History Timeline, the tower rose 155 feet in the center of the building. Each of the four faces of the hand-cranked clock measured nine feet across, making it the largest clock tower in the west. The pendulum was eight feet long, and the weight which powered it weighed in at 500 pounds.

More than a tower, figuratively:

At the turn of the twentieth century, Spokane prospered as an important railroad hub, connecting mining and agricultural districts and bringing in an influx of settlers and tourists. But over the decades, rail transportation declined, and residents began to look at the downtown tangle of tracks, trestles, and warehouses as an eyesore and the traffic-stopping trains as a maddening inconvenience.  City officials decided to host a world’s fair in part as a way to clean up the land around the Spokane River and its dramatic falls. Through herculean efforts chronicled by Jim Kershner in an article for History Link, Expo ’74 came off successfully. The railroad complexes were moved, the depots were demolished. Public concern saved the Great Northern Clock Tower. Along with Spokane Falls and the U.S. Pavilion canopy, it became a popular icon of the fair.

Today, the tower remains a common visual for the city of Spokane, reproduced everywhere from tourist brochures to movies. The clock continues to show the time, wound by hand on a weekly basis. In addition, it is an historical symbol for the railroads that gave life to the city by the river.

Mount Spokane, the closest of neighboring mountains to the city itself, is a natural playground for all seasons. Here you can wander through wildflowers in the spring, cool off and pick huckleberries in the summer, hike and mountain bike in autumn’s chill. But it is perhaps best known as a winter retreat, a place for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, snow tubing, downhill skiing and snow-boarding, all the while surveying wintery landscapes as far as the eye can see. Today we’ll focus on skiing and snow-boarding.

Not for me:

Full disclosure—I cannot ski. The idea of plunging at breakneck speed on board-like material down a tilting terrain terrorizes me. As a teenager, I spent the night in a hospital after a day of unsupervised skiing with my church youth group. Four years later I stood at the top of a beginner’s slope, skis and poles at the ready, and burst into tears. Add to that almost forty years living in the Caribbean, where temperatures rarely dropped below 70 degrees, and … well, you get the idea.

However, our younger daughter visited over Christmas. She is interested in skiing, and I am interested in her learning to ski properly. My husband and I gifted her with a private ski lesson, and on a sunny, chilly day at the end of the year, we headed up Road 206 to Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park.

The park:

Some 25 northeast of Spokane, the park can be reached in under an hour from most places in the city. It is located within the Mt. Spokane State Park, on the eastern, and starting this year, northern slopes of the 5,889-foot Mt. Spokane, with a vertical drop of 2,000 feet. Back in the 1930s, local ski clubs purchased some 500 acres of land up here and built lodges, tow ropes, and ski jumps to complement the trails. Today, the ski jumps are gone, but the park has expanded to more than 1,500 acres, with six lifts and over 50 runs catering to beginner, intermediate, and advanced skiers. Some 400 feet of dry snow falls annually. At the summit, the iconic stone Vista House, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, offers shelter and refreshments on weekends and holidays. There is also a dining lodge, a beginner’s slope, ski classes, and a tubing hill. The park is family-friendly and a loyal favorite of the local ski community.

The experience:

The day we drove up to the park proved to be the nicest day of the week between Christmas and the new year, and the staff was overwhelmed with the crowds who chose that day to ski. When we arrived at 10:00 a.m., parking extended down the road and lines were long to check in and gather up equipment. We regretted not arriving earlier, and my husband and I gave up on the idea of driving elsewhere in the park and losing our spot. So, while our daughter had a very generous private lesson and explored the runs on her own (with mixed success), my husband and I sat for several hours on the second floor of the lodge, looking out at the ski lift, trying to read in spite of the din, and sampling the restaurant’s wraps, one of the healthier items on the menu. I took a short walk, turning around when I startled a skier on a connecting run.

When I returned to continue my circumnavigation of Lake Coeur d’Alene,  I chose to do it along the scenic triangle of I-90 and routes 3 and 97. And scenic it is, with soaring mountain ridges, symmetrical tracts of evergreen forests, glistening wavelets of lead-blue water, and, over all, blue sky and white cottony clouds.

From I-90:

After passing the exits for the city of Coeur d’Alene, I-90 begins to offer sweeping views of the northern portion of the lake, shaped like the head of our imaginary seahorse. I continued along I-90 to the easternmost portion of the triangle, the exit for Route 3. This took me over Fourth of July Pass, so named because the crew building the road arrived here on July Fourth, 1861, and held a mini-celebration. At 3,081 feet elevation, the pass gets heavy snows in winter months. It’s a popular destination for hiking, biking, snowshoeing and skiing, depending on the season.

From Route 3:

Killarney Lake

At Exit 34, Route 3 winds its way south along the Coeur d’Alene River and a chain of more than a dozen lakes formed by the Ice Age Floods [see the Channeled Scablands post]. These and the lakes at the southern end of Lake Coeur d’Alene draw thousands of kayakers, canoeists, and fishing enthusiasts every year. Among the best known of the chain lakes are Rose, Killarney, and Thompson. I’ve kayaked on Killarney Lake, a 500-acre body of water with its small Popcorn Island and a channel to the river. I’ve tried to kayak on the brooding dark waters of Black Lake but never found a put-in site. Signs at tourist stops on the lakes and river here warn against stirring up the soil or ingesting the water. That’s because the river passes through the mountain-bordered Silver Valley. Now a famous ski destination, the valley at one time produced tremendous quantities of lead, silver, and zinc from the nearby mountains, and heavy-metal sediments can still be found in the soils. Clean-up projects are underway.

Popcorn Island

Intertwined with the road is the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. The trail evolved from Indian foot path to railroad to a 72-mile paved trail linking the towns of Plummer on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation through Harrison to the mountain town of Mullan near the Montana border.

Route 97:

Facing the city of Coeur d’Alene

Route 97 winds its way through farmland and forest to reach Lake Coeur d’Alene near the town of Harrison. [An alternate route, along O’Gara Road, gets you to the lake sooner.] Above Harrison, the road crosses the river, with available detours to several large shallow lakes, before reaching the larger upper half of Lake Coeur d’Alene. From here it twists and turns along a series of bays, offering sweeping panoramas of the lake and forested hills. Beautiful homes and a couple of camps are half-hidden amid the evergreens.

Though this section of the lake is not so kayak friendly, there is a nice place to stretch your legs toward the end of the route. Mineral Ridge National Recreation Trail is found just beyond Beauty Bay. A 3.3 mile loop, it ascends a hill through Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir to offer spectacular views across the lake’s northern expanse, with signs interpreting local history and ecology.  Before connecting with I-90, Route 97 borders Wolf Lodge Bay, where, around Christmastime, up to 150 bald eagles stop to feed on salmon. Nature at its best, and, coming from Spokane, you don’t have to cross Fourth of July pass to see it!

For more information about Lake Coeur d’Alene, go to related websites at Visit North Idaho and Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Mineral Ridge

Like Spokane, Valdivia is bisected by a river. In point of fact, three major and several smaller rivers snake along the lush plains bordering Valdivia, eventually coming together as the Río Valdivia and emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps best known of the three is the Calle-Calle, said to be Chile’s only navigable waterway. Calle-Calle means ‘street-street’ in literal Spanish, but I doubt that is the origin of the river’s name …

Valdivia

Quick facts:

By looking through guide books and a variety of online sites, I’ve amassed several facts and figures about my home for a month. Some 140,000 people live there, similar in size to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan and Okaya, Japan, which are sister cities. Most descend from Amerindian groups, Spanish colonists, and German immigrants. Established in 1552, the settlement was named for Chile’s governor at the time, Pedro de Valdivia. Its climate somewhat resembles that of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, with an average high of 69 degrees F [20.5 C] in March. Landmarks include a colorful riverside fish market, prominent university, collection of historic fortifications, and a German brewery or two.

Valdivia is also known for a 1960 tragedy of cataclysmic proportions: more of that in a future post.