USA > Washington > Spokane County > Spokane > History of the city of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington : from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume I > Part 74
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Mayor I. S. Kaufman, eleeted by the eouneil to serve unexpired term of Jaeoh Hoover, to April 17th. 1889.
City Clerk J. J. White, April 18. 1888 to April 16th, 1890.
Chief of Fire Dept. W. W. Witherspoon. June 6th, 1888 to Dee. 2nd, 1889. Mayor Fred Furth, April 17, 1889 to April 16th, 1890.
Chief of Fire Dept. E. P. Gillette, Dec. 2nd, 1889 to April 16th, 1890. Mayor Chas. F. Clough, April 16th, 1890 to April 1th, 1891.
City Clerk C. O. Downing. April 16th, 1890 to May 13th, 1892. Chief of Fire Dept. F. B. Weinbrenner, April 16. 1890 to Nov. 27th. 1896. Chief of Police Dept. M. G. Harbord. April 16, 1890 to April 28, 1891. Mayor D. B. Fotheringham, April 1th, 1891 to May 13th, 1892. City Clerk C. O. Downing.
Chief of Police Dept. Peter Mertz. April 28th, 1891 to Sept. 10th, 1895. Mayor D. M. Drumheller, May 13th, 1892 to May 12th, 1893. City Clerk J. R. Rasmusson, May 13th, 1892 to May 12th, 1893. Mayor E. L. Powell. May 12th, 1893 to May 11th, 1894. City Clerk William Morse, May 12th, 1893 to May 19th, 1896. Chief of Police, Peter Mertz to Sept. 10th. 1905.
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Mayor Horatio N. Belt, May 11th, 1891 to May 14th, 1897.
City Clerk L. F. Boyd, May 19th. 1896 to May 16th, 1902.
Chief of Fire Dept. F. B. Weinbrenner to Nov. 27th, 1896 and A. II. Myers from November 27th, 1896 to date.
Chief of Police Dept. Wm. Hawthorne, March 17th, 1896 to June 11th, 1897.
Mayor E. D. Olmsted, May 144th, 1897 to May 12th, 1899.
Chief of Police Dept. J. F. Warren, July 6th, 1897 to July 11th, 1899.
Mayor J. M. Comstock, May 12th, 1899 to May 17th. 1901.
Chief of Police Dept. W. W. Witherspoon. July 11th, 1899 to June 17th, 1902. Mayor P. S. Byrne, May 17th, 1901 to May 15th, 1903.
City Clerk H. J. Gibbon, May 16th, 1902 to February 28th, 1903.
Chief of Police Dept. John F. Reddy August 5th, 1902 to May 6th, 1903.
Mayor L. F. Boyd, May 15th, 1903 to May 12th, 1905.
City Clerk C. A. Fleming February 28th, 1903 to date.
Chief of Police Dept. E. M. Woydt, May'12th, 1903 to March 8th. 1901. Mayor Floyd L. Daggett, May 12th, 1905 to May 17th, 1907.
Chief of Police Dept. Leroy Waller, August 16th, 1901 to May 17th, 1907.
Mayor C. Herbert Moore, May 17th, 1907 to May 14th. 1909.
Chief of Police Dept. Ren II. Rice, May 17th. 1907 to March 15th, 1909.
Mayor N. S. Pratt. May 14th, 1909 to March 14th, 1911.
Chief of Police Dept. John T. Sullivan Acting, May 11th. 1909 to Oct. 25th, 1910.
Chief of Police Dept. W. J. Doust, October 25th, 1910 to date.
Mayor William J. Hindley, March 14th, 1911 to date.
Chief of Police Dept. W. J. Doust.
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
TILJIY FOUNDATIONS
YORK IBRARY
DUUNDATIONS
A. M. Cannon
James N. Glover
W. H. Taylor
Jacob Houver
R. W. Forrest
Fred Furth
First Mayor of Spokane
C. F. Clough
D. B. Fatheringham
Dr. E. D. Olmsted
EARLY DAY MAYORS OF SPOKANE
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Floyd L. Daggett
J. M. Comstock
C. Herbert Moore
N. S. Pratt
D. M. Drumheller
P. S. Byrne
E. L. Powell
H. N. Belt
1. Frank Boyd
GROUP OF SPOKANE MAYORS
15 IC LIBRARY
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ORK
AT LABRARY
AT UND
CHAPTER LXXX BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BIG BEND COUNTRY
FUR TRADERS RANGE OVER THIS BROAD REGION-ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST STOCKMEN- TRAGIC END OF "WILD GOOSE BILL"-ARRIVAL OF THE SOLDIERS-FIRST SETTLER AT DAVENPORT-CRICKET SCOURGE OF 1882-83-CREATION OF LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS COUNTIES-HOT AND FURIOUS COUNTY SEAT CONTEST-DAVENPORT ARMS TO HOLD THE RECORDS-INVADING "ARMY" FROM SPRAGUE TAKES THEM WITHOUT BLOOD- SHED-A COUNTY WITHOUT A TOWN-COMING OF THE RAILROADS-WHITMAN COUNTY REDUCED TO MAKE ADAMS AND FRANKLIN COUNTIES-FIRST HOUSE IN RITZVILLE-HISTORIC OLD AINSWORTH-PASCO'S EXPENSIVE BANQUET-ADVENT OF THE GREAT NORTHERN.
D AVID THOMPSON, engineer and explorer of the Northwest Fur company of Canada, was probably the first white man to look upon the elevated prairie lands of the Big Bend country. Thompson's party crossed the Canadian Rockies in the spring of 1809, and in 1811 descended the Columbia river from Kettle Falls to Astoria.
A few weeks later an expedition from Astor's establishment near the mouth of the Columbia located a rival post at the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia, and a year later a competing post at the mouth of the Little Spokane. Communica- tion between the Astor depots at Okanogan and Spokane House was opened in 1812, and the party in charge of the packtrain between these points were the first white men to traverse the Big Bend region.
Hunting and exploring parties from Spokane House seouted widely over this broad region, and their old chronicles deseribe the Grand Coulee, lakes of mineral- ized waters and other topographical features.
Some thirty years later Protestant and Catholic missionaries became familiar with the geography of the country, and the site of the present town of Sprague served as a eamping spot for Father Eells, Rev. Elkanah Walker and their families en route from Walla Walla to Tshimakain.
Detaehments from Governor Stevens' exploring expedition of 1853 studied the lofty plateau, and four or five years thereafter, adventurous gold miners rocked out considerable placer gold from bars in the Columbia near Wenatchee and north into British Columbia. They were followed in the '60s by Chinese miners who worked over the old diggings of the white men, and about that time a few ad- venturous eattlemen drove their herds into the country and took up stock ranges where eattle and horses thrived well on the nutritious bunch-grass.
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It is thought that John Marlin, who came in 1871, with his wife and ten children, to the spot where now stands the town of Krupp, was the first white settler within the borders of the present day counties of Douglas and Grant. Marlin built a log house and engaged in stock-raising until 1876, when he sold his interests to George Urquhart, who was followed in 1877 by his brother Donald. At that time a stock- man named Irby, the Walter Brothers, R. M. Bacon and John Enos, more widely known as "Portuguese Joc," had stock ranches along Crab creek, east of the Mar- lin place. Mr. Bacon served as the first postmaster in Lincoln county, when Crab Creek postoffice was established. with a weekly mail service by stage.
One of the best known frontier characters in the country. was Wm. Conden, more familiarly known as "Wild Goose Bill." "When I was Indian Agent from 1887 to 1889," says Major Gwydir, "I became intimately acquainted with Bill and found him, as the Indians expressed it. a skookum Indian. Conden came to the northwest in 1856. He began packing between Walla Walla and Fort Colville. He afterwards built and operated a ferry on the Columbia, which is still known as 'Wild Goose Bill's ferry'. He also had a trading establishment at that point.
"Conden won his sobriquet by firing into a large flock of tame geese owned by a settler between Walla Walla and Colville, under the impression that they were wild. The owner of the Boek had brought the eggs all the way from Oregon and was so indignant over their loss that she followed Bill to his home. delivering all the way a seathing tirade against the stupidity of a man who pretended to be a frontiersman and didn't know the difference between a wild goose and a tame one.
"Bill had considerable trouble with his first squaw wife, Julia; she was a Coeur d'Alene Indian and had had her ears trimmed by the Indian Court, that being the penalty among that tribe for immorality in women. Humiliated by the indignity and shame inflicted upon her, and disgusted with her tribe, she eloped with Bill. The Indians soon got on their trail, which Bill had taken no trouble to hide, for as he afterwards expressed it, he sort of thought he would be followed. A few days later he observed four mounted Indians coming down the trail toward his camp. Recognizing the Indians as Coeur d'Alenes he prepared for action. What the Indians thought or said upon meeting Bill has never been recorded, but after the meeting, Bill was the possessor of four ponies and their equipment, their former owners having no further use for them. Conden met his death in a tragic way, January 21, 1895. He and a man named Parks had some trouble and there was a woman mixed up with it. Bill's last words were 'I got him and I guess he's got me.'"
Grown weary of the nomadic life of the packer, Conden took a squatter's claim on which the town of Wilbur was subsequently platted, and when the country was surveyed, filed a homestead and completed his title.
Settlement of the Big Bend country showed little progress in the '70s. Discovery had not been made of the grain and fruit-growing possibilities of the uplands, and stock-raising continued the sole industry. The first settlements in the vicinity of Davenport were made in 1878 and 1879. O. B. Parks came up from California in '78 and took a claim one mile north of the present county seat; J. G. Kethroc located near Reardan, and Barney Fitzpatrick engaged in the stock-raising busi- ness, and after the establishment of old Fort Spokane at the mouth of the Spokane river, took a government contract to supply the troops with beef. Others who came
BIRD 'SEYE VIEW OF RITZVILLE, WASHINGTON
1
VIEW OF DAVENPORT, WASHINGTON
5 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
TLEIN FOUNDATIONS
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in 1879 were Mr. and Mrs. A. D. Strout, Joseph M. Nichols, C. C. May, A. G. Courtright, L. A. Kennedy, T. M. Cooper, Byron Richards, James Hurlburt, Hor- ace Parker and Mr. and Mrs. John Oakley.
"The site for Fort Spokane," says a "History of the Big Bend Country," "was selected in September, 1880, by General O. O. Howard, department commander, and Lieutenant Colonel Merriam of the Second U. S. Infantry. It was one of the prettiest among the frontier posts, and was selected because it was in easy striking distance of the Colville Indian reservation just across the Columbia river. To this newly selected post were brought five companies of the Second infantry and one troop of the Second cavalry under command of Lieutenant Colonel Merriam. These troops were brought from the foot of Lake Chelan, where they had been for some time exerting a wholesome influence upon the Chelan Indians. This post was officially abandoned in 1899."
The presence of so large a body of troops stimulated immigration, both hy re- assuring the timid and cautious and by affording an inviting market for agricul- tural products and live stock.
This year a man named Harker took a claim at Cottonwood Springs, the historie camping spot which subsequently became Davenport, and a postoffice named Cotton- wood was established there with Harker as postmaster and owner of a small stock of merchandise. The first real business house was erected in 1881, when John H. Nicholls built a combination store, dwelling, postoffice and hotel. Mr. Nicholls freighted his goods from Spokane Falls and Cheney, the Northern Pacifie having reached those towns from the west ; but prior to this year, goods needed by the scattered settlement were hanled from Colfax and Walla Walla.
Many were the hardships and privations encountered by the first settlers of the Big Bend country. Necessarily the early day habitations were rough and primi- tive-a poer shelter for delieate women and children against the cold blasts of winter. Towns, schools and churches had been left behind, and supplies had to be freighted long distances over poor roads or no roads at all. Medical attention in ease of illness was hardly to be thought of; and solitude left its depressing influ- ence. In some instances flour could be had only by grinding wheat in coffee mills. These pioneer conditions were intensified by the severity of the winter of 1881-82, and to cap the climax of their troubles, the pioneers suffered in the summers of 1882 and 1883 from an appalling visitation of eriekets.
"Myriads of large black crickets." to quote the "History of the Big Bend Country," "measuring from one to two inches long, swarmed out of the earth and up through the snow, and devastated the fields for two seasons. Settlers combined their forces and dug ditches, surrounding their farms with pits five rods apart, and men, women and children worked day and night with brooms, sweeping the pests into pits and destroying them. The bulk of their crops destroyed, families sub- sisted on peas and fish throughout the season. If people could have obtained the means to escape, the country would have been depopulated. Great was the re- joicing when it became known that the cricket pest was completely exterminated."
At this period Spokane county swept westward to the Columbia river, and the pioneers 50 and 100 miles distant from the county seat began an agitation for a new county. They found a responsive friend in Judge N. T. Caton, then a member of
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the territorial legislature from Walla Walla county, who framed and introduced a bill creating the proposed new county of Sprague, which he afterwards amended to Lincoln, and naming the town of Sprague as temporary county seat. In com- mittee the bill was amended to make Davenport the temporary seat of government, a change which excited a protesting petition from 420 persons, "as there are only two houses in that locality, and it is forty miles from any railroad linc." Notwith- standing this opposition, the bill passed and was approved by the Governor Novem- ber 21, 1883.
"At the general election of 1884." to quote from the Lincoln County Times, "the people were called upon to vote upon the location of the county seat. There were three candidates for the honor. Davenport, Harrington and Sprague. The campaign preceding the election was hot and furious. At that time women were entitled to the ballot. Few voters entitled to a vote failed to exercise that privilege, while considering the extent of the population, the figures would indicate that purity of the ballot was not a feature of the election. The total vote polled was 2,227. Of this number Sprague received 1,256, Davenport 819, and Harrington 202. Sprague cast 1,023 votes."
Davenport contested the election on grounds of fraudulent voting and refused to surrender the county records. "The roads leading into the town from all direc- tions were lined with men carrying muskets, revolvers, Winchesters and other weapons of warfare, all determined to hold the fort at Davenport," says the his- tory previously quoted. "For three long weeks, night and day, did they guard and garrison the town. A ditch on the hillside and a ridge mark the place where breastworks were thrown up. They are pointed out to the visitor to this day-me- morials of that perilous period."
Then the defending army, grown weary of this irksome guard duty, returned to their homes, and "suddenly a force swept down upon Davenport from 60 to 100 strong and armed to the teeth, and no resistance was made. Davenport surren- dered the county records. Sheriff Cody and Martin J. Maloney were at the head of the army of deputies who came up from Sprague and removed the records from Dav- enport. When the sheriff drove across the ercek and his errand became known, Dick Hutchinson stepped forward with a pistol as long as his arm and dared Cody to shoot it out with him at twenty paces. But Cody had business to attend to and re- fused to accommodate the warlike Dick with an exchange of shots."
Twelve years after, at the general election in November, 1896, Davenport re- newed the contest and won the county seat with a vote of 1,582; against removal, 537 : for Harrington, 210.
Scarcely was the ink dry on the act which out Lineoln county away from Spo- kanc than adroit pressure was brought on the territorial legislature to carve again and create a county of Douglas from western Lincoln. Notwithstanding that the confines of the proposed new county held a sparse and wide scattered population. but little if any in excess of 100, the lawmakers yielded. and on November 28, 1883, only four days after his approval of the aet creating Lincoln county, the governor signed the bill which called Douglas county into being. Within the entire county there was not a town of any deseription. The law gave "Okanogan City" the tem- porary county seat, a place that had been platted expressly for that purpose. Okanogan had one habitation, no more, and that a tent to shelter its ambitious popu-
Hetts
1
PASCO, WASHINGTON, AT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE COLUMBIA AND SNAKE RIVERS
CHTER JOSEPH'S CAMP AT NESPELEM, WASHINGTON, TAKEN JUST BEFORE HIS DEATH
WILD GOOSE BILL'S HISTORIC FERRY ON THE COLUMBIA, NORTH OF WILBUR
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lation of one, Walter Mann. "There was not a store, postoffice, saloon or black- smith shop, a railway train or a stage line in the whole territory to be subsequently known as Douglas county, a territory as large as the state of Connecticut," says the author of a local history, who adds that "in that portion of the county west of the Grand Coulee we find that before 1883 there had never been a white settler. To Platt Corbaley belongs the honor of being the first to locate west of the Coulee. He came in April, 1883, and took up his residence just west of Badger mountain, two miles southwest of the present town of Waterville."
A census taken by F. M. Alexander in December, 1883, of those who passed that winter in the Badger mountain country, which practically meant everybody living in the western portion of the county, diselosed fewer than 80 persons.
Okanogan's townsite boomers did their best to make the place a "metropolis," but all to no avail. The first meeting of the county commissioners was held in the tent, with H. A. Meyers and J. W. Adams present, P. M. Corbaley absent; and a few weeks later B. I. Martin put up a store building. 24x36. and this served as a court- house until the county seat was transferred to Waterville, in 1887. Three or four buildings constituted the pretentious town of Okanogan in the heyday of its pros- perity. The townsite was inviting; the surrounding soil exeellent; and Okanogan started with the "bulge" on every possible rival. But it lacked one essential; it had no water and could procure none, although its promoters in their desperation drilled down 285 feet.
When Okanogan's dilemma became apparent, Judge Lucian B. Nash, who had invested in a sawmill on Badger mountain, platted the rival town of Nashland, so- called in honor of Major E. D. Nash, a pioneer of the county. E. D. Nash started there a store, the Badger postoffice was transferred from Mr. Corbaley's place, some one started a blacksmith shop, and the surrounding settlers resolved to contest with Okanogan for permanent eounty seat honors. At the election in November, 1884, Okanogan won by a single vote. Two years later Waterville captured the county seat.
From 1883 to 1890 immigration moved into the Big Bend country in constantly increasing streams. The fame of its rich soil, its invigorating climate and the hos- pitable spirit of its people spread afar, and settlers moved in from the west and the east. Never again, so long as time endures. will be witnessed in the United States such scenes as attended the occupation of these broad expanses of fertile government lands. For prairie soil of that quality ean be found no more within the public domain. Brave and industrious homesteaders went into the Big Bend region and made good with little or no capital at all to sustain them. The men were hardy. the women patient and self-denying, the children eager for the ad- ventures that go with the settlement of a new country. The neighborly spirit ran high, and people were content and happy when fortunate enough to have the sim- ple necessaries of life and the plainest of attire. For ostentatious wealth had not yet entered in to arouse discontent and excite envy. "Laek of desire," saith Seneea, "is the greatest of riches."
While the pioneers of the Big Bend country were happy with the denials and hardships incident to the reelamation of a new domain, yet were they progressive and ambitions in the better meaning of the word. Schools, churches and other re- fining influences were fostered. the building of better dwellings followed temporary Vol. 1-40
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residence in eabins and shaeks: newspapers were encouraged in even the small towns; and all awaited eagerly the coming of railroads to stimulate further settle- ment and justify the planting of a larger aereage in grain.
With the new year. 1887, the country was stirred by rumors of railroad exten- sions from the main line of the Northern Pacific. One of the first projects sur- veyed this year was the Sprague & Big Bend railroad, from Sprague to "Wild Goose Bill's raneh" at Wilbur. with a proposed branch line to serve the Mondovi. Fair- view and Davenport sections. This enterprise failed to materialize. but it stirred the Northern Pacific to action, and that company sent engineers into Lincoln county and ran surveys for a branch line from Cheney west. A. M. Cannon, Paul Mohr and others were active, too, with their projected Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern project. to eross the state from Puget Sound to Spokane. Spokane citizens sub- seribed $175,000 to this ambitious undertaking, and in the spring of 1888 a con- tract was let for the construction of the first sixty miles west from Spokane. This road was actually built from Spokane to a point near Davenport, but the company subsequently lost its entity, its completed road was picked up by the Northern Pa- cific. and a few years later the steel was taken up and only an abandoned grade remained as a memorial to disappointed hopes.
Meanwhile the Northern Pacific went forward with vigorous construction of its Central Washington branch, and by February, 1889, had laid steel into Daven- port. The line was extended this year to Almira, and in 1890 to Coulee City in the Grand coulec, and was graded eight miles beyond. in an ambitious effort to climb out of the coulee and continue on "to an eligible point on the Columbia, near the mouth of the Wenatchee river." Surveys were also made northwesterly towards the Okanogan country. After the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century the Cen- tral Washington still has its terminus at Coulee City.
Whether Adams and Franklin counties should be classified as a part of the Big Bend country has long been a close question. Prior to the agricultural development of the extensive wheat-growing areas in Adams county, when stockmen ranged their large herds far and wide in search of fresh pasturage. the term "Big Bend country" was used with wider latitude than in recent years; and with the country's fuller development, and attendant growth of such fine towns as Ritzville. Lind, Washtuena and Paseo, we have seen an inereasing tendency to look upon these two counties as a great distriet unto themselves ; and more recently still, to regard Adams county as an empire within itself, and to classify Pasco and Kennewick as Twin Cities with a future peculiarly their own by reason of identity of interest in irri- gation, transportation lines and location at the junetion of the Columbia and the Snake.
The first settlers within the area that now forms Adams county located in the Cow Creek section. George Lucas, the earliest arrival, engaged in the stock in- dustry there in the latter '60s; his place was on the old military road from Walla Walla to old Fort Colville. Reporting this pioneer's departure for a pleasure trip to California, ten years ago, the Adams County News said: "His presence in town last Saturday, clad in blanket breeches, leathern belt. army shirt, canvas coat and wide sombrero, recalled incidents which will be remembered by some of the pioneers of the '70s, when buenas and some of his followers donned Indian costume, and with painted faces appeared upon the high hills in a hostile manner intended to frighten
J. D. LABRIE
One of the First Settlers at Medieal Lake
ANDREW LE FEVRE
One of the first settlers at Medical Lake
STATE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE AT MEDICAL LAKE
POLIC LIAMARY
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the scattered immigrants aeross the border and out of the country. But the sturdy adventurers were made of sterner stuff, and when their rifles began to craek on the clear morning air, the confederate redskins hiked for tall timber."
The deeade between 1870 and 1880 brought other settlers, all to follow the stoek industry ; but with the approach of the main line of the Northern Pacific came an influx of wheat farmers, and year by year the agricultural possibilities of the soil were given inereasing demonstration.
Philip Ritz, the first settler in the northern part of the county, located a home- stead in 1878 immediately south of the site of Ritzville, and the following year a number of settlers eame up from the Walla Walla valley.
S. A. Wells, who subsequently eame to Spokane and held here official positions, was the leading spirit in the movement in 1883 to create Adams and Franklin coun- ties from territory cut off from Whitman. "In looking over the map it one day occurred to me that Ritzville might be converted into a county capital." said Mr. Wells, many years thereafter. "Impressed with this idea, I went to the railroad station and broached the subject. The people with whom I eonversed pronounced the scheme impracticable. They said, 'It can't be done.' I replied, 'Can't is a word I do not recognize in my vocabulary.' On this line I proceeded, and against great obstaeles and numerous diseouragements sueeeeded in seeuring the formation of the two counties and the location of the county seat at Ritzville."
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