In Search of Natatorium Park

I enjoy swimming, and my ears pick up at the mere mention of water. Shortly after arriving in Spokane, I heard snippets of conversation about a place called Natatorium Park. ‘Natatorium,’ with its Latin origins, is a fancy word for a swimming pool, usually indoors. I asked around and learned it was in fact a park with an indoor pool that had closed long ago. For some reason, it seemed important to know exactly where it had been. East or west of the Spokane River? North or south of the city? Close or far away? In my search to find the location, I found quite a bit more. And, thanks to the Internet, one afternoon I stepped back in time and enjoyed the marvelous Natatorium Park.

Shoot the Chutes, courtesy PdxHistory.com

In the beginning:

Two articles, one from The Spokesman-Review and the other from Go to Spokane Magazine, present interesting overviews of the park and its history. It all began in 1887 with the simple creation of a family park for picnics on a loop of land on the banks of the Spokane River across from today’s Spokane Falls Community College [aha: east of the river and north of the city]. Two years later, a street car line crossed the river at Monroe and headed west on Boone, ending at the picnic area. The area became known as Twickenham Park and soon included a baseball diamond with grandstands and a hotel/casino. It was one of many trolley parks in vogue at the time, parks created at the end of a line to encourage trolley riders.

Though I now knew how to get to the former park, I kept researching.

In 1892, the owners of the park and trolley, now the Washington Water Power Company, built an indoor swimming pool, its water heated to a nippy 75 degrees F. The name Natatorium Park—reduced to Nat Park over the years—stuck.

A Coney Island of the Inland Northwest:

Looff Carousel

In order to keep riders coming back on the trolley, improvements were constantly made. Nat Park became a Coney Island of the Inland Northwest. There were natural attractions: landscaped gardens, a lily pond, picnic areas, an ornate fountain. And wonderful, surprisingly innovative amusement rides: the Jack Rabbit wooden rollercoaster, said to be the fastest in existence at the time; Ye Old Mill, a boat ride through a tunnel featuring such scenes as a Japanese flower garden, Eskimos in the frozen north, and a small live orchestra; Shoot the Chutes, a boat that was pulled up a 100-foot-high ramp and let go into a pool of water; and the Looff Carousel. It was built by Charles Looff, who also built the carousel at Coney Island. He presented it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Emma, and her husband, Louis Vogel, who worked at and eventually owned Natatorium Park. There were also performers: Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Babe Ruth, The Grand Old Oprey, and of course, Bing Crosby, among many others.

Decline and demise:

After World War II, with the decline of trolleys and other forms of public transportation and the rise of automobiles, people had wider choices of entertainment. The earlier throngs of visitors dwindled, maintenance suffered, and rides closed. In 1962 Vogel sold the park to the Shriners, who tried, unsuccessfully, to keep it going. In 1968, the park was permanently closed. All attractions except for the Looff Carousel were burned or carted away into obscurity. Eventually the site became a trailer park which went by another fancy name—San Souci, French for ‘carefree.’

My virtual afternoon at the park:

Virtual Jack Rabbit

Way led onto way in my Internet Natatorium search, and I stumbled on two more excellent sites that offered me a chance to spend time in the park. First stop: PdxHistory.com. Here, beautiful colorized postcards of the different attractions, enjoyed by visitors dressed in their Sunday best, are interspersed with detailed descriptions and historical notes. Second stop: Nat Park website. A great place for Nat park aficionados, it has photos as well as curious data and reminiscences by nostalgic visitors. And that’s not all … Never rode the Jack Rabbit? No problem: you can take a virtual ride on the rollercoaster in a simulation that’s almost scary. Or you can visit the park through an hour-long documentary produced by KSPS TV and offered free on the website. Titled Remember When: Nat Park, it recreates the park years through pictures, home videos, news footage, and interviews. It showed me Natatorium Park, up close and personal.

The site today:

A recent afternoon found me heading to the present-day site of the old park. With modest but mounting excitement, I drove  west on Boone Avenue as it curved to the right, ever closer to the river, when—screech!—my car came to a halt in front of impossible-to-miss stop/private property/no trespassing signs. The former Natatorium Park, once an entertainment magnet for up to 50,000 people a day, was now a private senior-citizen mobile home community. Ah well.