The Salmon Chief
Spokane is the largest city and the hub of the Inland Northwest. In spite of its spelling, the city is pronounced as if the final ‘e’ didn’t exist – Spo-can, not Spo-cane. The word means ‘children of the sun’ in the Salish language, and it refers to the Spokane people who settled in the region thousands of years ago.
Recent history:
With the arrival of the Great Northern Railway in the late 1800s, the city took off. Regional mining, farming, and logging fueled the economy, and many elegant homes and buildings in the downtown neighborhoods date back to the turn of the 20th century. Eventually, growth slowed and the economy stagnated. In 1974, Spokane hosted the World’s Fair, and an eye-sore network of train tracks downtown transformed into the lovely Riverfront Park. Since then, Spokane has been on a modest but steady upward trajectory.
Spokane, facing north
Initial looks can be deceiving:
When my husband and I first arrived here, our realtor told a story of a potential client. Scheduled to meet at a certain hour, the client didn’t show. When the realtor finally called her, the woman said she had taken one look at the city from her car on I-90 and decided to keep going. Of course, that wasn’t fair. How many cities look good from an interstate? From there, Spokane does resemble a small rust-belt city crammed with yesteryear brick buildings, where bowling alleys and drive-in theaters might highlight local entertainment.
All sorts of attributes:
However, if you get off the interstate and look more closely, you see something else. Low evergreen mountains in the distance encircle much of the city. As in Valdivia, Chile, a river runs through it, the Spokane River, somersaulting in a wild series of waterfalls past downtown. The yesteryear brick buildings have their own classic charm, and many now house breweries, wineries, boutique stores, and upscale restaurants.
View from the Rocks of Sharon
A quarter million people live in Spokane proper, with three-quarter million in the larger metropolitan area encompassing Spokane Valley and Coeur d’Alene in northern Idaho. The region boasts any number of enviable attributes – museums, orchestras, regional theater, parks, universities, and a wealth of places to worship, wine, and dine. A short drive away are dozens of lakes; numerous mountains for hiking, biking, skiing, and snowshoeing; rolling hills of farmland; and basalt formations that tell a fascinating geological tale. What’s more, homes and other costs of living are reasonable; traffic, for the most part, moves; the airport, though petite, is cute-as-a-button and very passenger-friendly; and British Columbia, Canada is less than a three-hour drive away.
Small wonder, then, that Spokane’s modest upward trajectory has become a bit more dramatic in recent years. For more information, go to Visit Spokane.