Riverside State Park History

The Spokane River flows west from its source at Coeur d’Alene Lake through the Spokane Valley. After it tumbles over its namesake waterfalls in its namesake city, it bends to the northwest and meanders through a spectacular canyon described by some as the “Grand Park of the Spokane.”

The walls of the river canyon are made of basalt lava flows that erupted from vents in southeast Washington during the outpourings that created the Columbia Plateau. In Riverside State Park, sandwiched between two layers of the basalt flows is a layer of clay, silt and sand deposited in an ancient lake that formed on the basalt surface before being covered by a later lava flow.

At the popular Bowl & Pitcher geologic feature in Riverside State Park, careful observation reveals the presence of bulbous structures called pillow basalt where the upper lava flow came into contact with the lake water, quickly solidifying on contact. The giant boulders that make up the feature likely came to their present resting places during Ice Age floods that scoured the area near the end of the most recent ice age.

During the floods, the weaker clay, silt and sand between lava flows was easily washed away, removing the support for the overlying rocks, which then tumbled down into their present jumbled position.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territories of Interior Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

One of the most significant parts of today’s Riverside State Park is the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers —Nim Chin Tseen, “The Great Gathering Place” – a place that Indigenous people have occupied and stewarded for thousands of years. In season, nets, weirs and traps were used to harvest prolific runs of salmon and steelhead trout. Surrounding areas were deer hunting grounds and berry gathering areas. Into the late 1800s, visitors noted that over 100 dwellings were used as wintertime residences in the vicinity of the confluence.

Spokane House

Early in the 1800s, fur traders from the North West Company, based in Canada, utilized a travel route through Howse Pass in the Rocky Mountains to access the Columbia River watershed. They established four trading centers in traditional Indigenous residence areas west of the Continental Divide to exchange manufactured goods such as guns, spears, hatchets, traps, knives, kettles, blankets, paints and beads brought from population centers in eastern Canada for furs trapped by local Indigenous people.

In 1810, two company employees, Finan McDonald and Jacques (Jaco) Finlay (of Scottish and Cree ancestry) supervised construction of the westernmost of these posts, named Spokane House. Located at the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers, in today’s Riverside State Park, Spokane House consisted of a store, warehouse, blacksmith shop, and quarters for the employees and their families.

Just two years later, a larger, competing trading post complete with log palisades and bastions on two corners, was built a short distance from Spokane House by American John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company. Though initially profitable, the outbreak of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States threatened the security of the Pacific Fur Company’s remote outposts in the Pacific Northwest and the company was sold to the North West Company. After the sale, the North West Company’s Spokane House operations moved to the better-constructed buildings of the former Pacific Fur Company post.

The North West Company was merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. The new owners closed Spokane House in 1826 and moved their operations to the Kettle Falls area on the Columbia River.

Jaco Finley and his Spokane wife Teshwintichina chose to remain at the site. Notably, he was sought out by naturalist David Douglas in 1826, as the only skilled gunsmith in the region. Jaco was buried along with some of his personal items underneath one of the bastions of Spokane House in May 1828.

In the 1870s James Walton, known by his nickname, “Peavine Jimmy,” built a roadhouse and feeding station for travelers and their stock near the site of Spokane House. The threshing barn that he built for processing grains for stock feed remained into the modern era and has been restored as an exhibit.

The Battle of Spokane Plains

Representatives of numerous Indigenous people with traditional territories in what is now eastern Washington negotiated and signed treaties with Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens at Walla Walla on June 9, 1855. The treaties were not ratified by the US Senate until 1859, and in the interim, the benefits promised by the treaties were not available to the tribes that had signed.

The discovery of gold in the Colville area during this period resulted in numerous Euro-American prospectors entering the as-yet-unceded Indigenous land, sometimes coming into conflict with residents. A government agent sent to investigate the incidents, Andrew Bolon, was killed by Indigenous warriors.

In response, the US Army unsuccessfully sent soldiers into the area to apprehend those involved. After several skirmishes and a widening of the conflict into the Puget Sound area, Colonel George Wright was ordered to “attack All the hostile Indians you meet, with vigor; make their punishment severe and persevere until the submission of all is complete.”

Armed with new, highly accurate rifles, Colonel Wright’s forces engaged the allied tribes at the Battle of Spokane Plains, a running battle that passed through the southern part of today’s Riverside State Park, on September 5, 1858.

In the days following the battle, Colonel Wright ordered the destruction of the Indigenous people’s food stores, nearly 1,000 horses, and their dwellings. The atrocities culminated in the summary execution of Qualchan, a Yakama leader, on September 24, 1858.

Ultimately, the Indigenous lands in the area were relinquished by an executive order of President Ulysses S. Grant on November 8, 1873, which established the Spokane Indian Reservation. Members of the Spokane Tribes who did not relocate to the reservation were forced to move by an agreement on March 18, 1887, whereby “the bands of the Spokane Indians in council deeded to the United States all right, title, and claim which they had, or ever would have, to any and all lands lying outside the reservation.” The legality of such relinquishments was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1941, writing:

“Aboriginal title … exists at the pleasure of the United States, and may be extinguished ‘by treaty, by the sword, by purchase, by the exercise of complete dominion adverse to the right of occupancy, or otherwise…’”

Land Distribution

The US government survey of the area was completed in 1880-1881, and the land in today’s Riverside State Park passed into private ownership under the terms of various federal land disposal laws. The largest portion of eventual park land was conveyed into private ownership in 1894 as a part of the Northern Pacific (NP) Railroad Land Grant. The US Congress had approved the grant in 1864, which eventually conveyed nearly 40 million acres of public domain lands to subsidize the construction of railroad lines into the western states. The “Bowl and Pitcher” formations, the suspension bridge across the river just upstream, the nearby park campground, and the Spokane House Interpretive Center are all located on land granted to the NP.

Much of the land was claimed, improved with homes and agricultural development, and patented under the terms of the 1862 Homestead Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln. The site of the original Spokane House fur trading post, the narrow ravine of Deep Creek Canyon and the later site of the Camp Seven Mile Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp were all initially conveyed into private ownership as Homestead patents.

Other parts of today’s park were sold directly by the federal government to private owners as Cash Entry patents, including the valley of the meandering Little Spokane River running below the rugged granite outcrops of the Knothead Overlooks in the north part of the park. One of those Cash Entry patents was purchased by Charles H. Arnold in 1887, who had abandoned an attempted homestead claim at the confluence, due to “difficulties with the Indians.”

Fort George Wright Military Reservation

In 1895, the City of Spokane donated 1,000 acres of land along the Spokane River to the federal government along with guaranteed free city water to encourage the establishment of a military base. In 1896, the US Congress authorized construction of a fort on the site to replace Fort Spokane, located at the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia Rivers. The new site was better situated for military purposes with convenient connections to railway lines. The fort was named to honor George Wright, who had been promoted to brigadier general after the Battle of Spokane Plains. Wright perished in an 1865 shipwreck off the California coast. The first unit to garrison the fort were Black soldiers, veterans of the Spanish-American War and Indian Wars. Initially spurned by the local community, the soldiers eventually won praise for their civic works and the popularity of the regimental band, which frequently performed at local events.

The fort served mostly as a logistics hub for military supplies. During World War II, the Seven Mile Military Reservation, just north of the fort, was used as a gunnery training site by the US Army Air Forces. Among the many enlisted men who trained as ball turret gunners at Camp Seven Mile was actor Clark Gable, who trained there in January 1943 before serving on several missions in Europe and producing recruitment films for the US Army.

Nine Mile Dam

The city of Spokane’s development and expansion was driven by real estate development fueled by profits made in mining and agricultural projects.

Jay P. Graves followed his older brother Frank to Spokane Falls (the city’s name was shortened to “Spokane” in 1891) in 1887, where he established a real estate business. As a relative newcomer with a smaller business, he was better able to weather the economic downturn of the Panic of 1893 than most of the long-established entrepreneurs in Spokane. As a result, he came out of the depression with valuable investments bought at bargain prices from bankrupt owners. With the profits, he invested in mining and smelting operations in British Columbia and began the development of streetcar lines and interurban railways in and beyond Spokane to provide access to his real estate developments.

In order to avoid having to purchase electric power for the streetcars from the Washington Water Power Company, which operated competing streetcars, Graves financed the construction of Nine Mile Dam on the Spokane River in today’s Riverside State Park. Beginning in 1908, the dam provided hydroelectric power to his streetcars and 130 miles of railways. The dam incorporated a unique design in which the three-story powerhouse holds back a portion of the river’s flow. The remainder of the dam was built of cyclopean masonry (large granite blocks set in concrete).

Washington Water Power purchased the Nine Mile Dam from Graves in 1925. In 1928-1929, the company built 10 small brick cottages at the dam “to provide housing for its personnel at the remote location.”

The Washington Water Power Company completed Little Falls Dam, 28 miles downstream, in 1910. The dam blocked passage for salmon and other anadromous fish, permanently eliminating fish runs above that point in the Spokane River.

Creating a State Park

The story of the establishment of Riverside State Park is closely entwined with the development of the city of Spokane.

Aubrey L. White moved to Spokane in 1889, working at a variety of jobs before being hired by Jay P. Graves to market shares in his British Columbia mining and smelting ventures. The job required White to work in New York, Philadelphia and other eastern cities, and he noted how those cities were struggling to develop park systems to serve their residents.

When White returned to Spokane in 1906 with a modest fortune gained from his work for Graves, he advocated for the purchase of lands for parks while it was still affordable. His influence with many of the city’s wealthiest residents, friends he called his “powerhouse group,”  afforded opportunities to secure park land donations which often enhanced the value of their real estate developments. The city engaged the Olmstead Brothers landscape architecture firm to create a plan for parks and city voters approved a $1 million park bond measure on May 3, 1910.

On May 6, 1934, Aubrey L. White appeared before the State Parks Committee to support the donation of more than 800 acres of land owned by the city for a state park saying, “The reason this park should be deeded now is that the CCC boys cannot do the development necessary on the park while it is a city park; they can when the state owns it.”

Several major donations and acquisitions fostered the growth of Riverside State Park:

• October 5, 1934—Spokane County donated 105 acres
• 1935—The City of Spokane donated 827 acres of land that the city owned as a result of the push to acquire parklands inspired by the Olmstead Brothers recommendations and the work of Aubrey L. White. The land included the east bank of the Spokane River at the Bowl and Pitcher formation and most of Deep Creek Canyon.
• 1936—Washington Water Power (now Avista Corp.) donated 505 acres on the west bank of the Spokane River running from the Bowl and Pitcher downstream.
• 1937—Railway Land and Improvement Co., a real estate business led by Jay P. Graves, donated 1,171 acres in the vicinity of Nine Mile Dam.
• 1938—Spokane County donated 503 acres located between the Deep Creek Canyon and Bowl and Pitcher areas, tying the areas together.
• 1939—An informal partnership of investors and landowners coordinated by Aubrey L. White resulted in the donation of 80 acres near the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers, the site of the Pacific Fur Company post and today’s Spokane House Interpretive Center.

CCC Camp Seven Mile

In the 1930’s as the Great Depression deepened, people throughout Washington and across the US struggled with poverty as job losses and business closures erased their economic security. Newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved fast to provide material relief for suffering families, and one of the earliest hallmark programs of the administration was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Intended to provide useful employment and training for single men aged 18 to 25, the CCC ultimately provided jobs for more than 2 million enrollees who performed work in national and state parks and forests at more than 500 camps.

CCC Camp Seven Mile was established in October 1933 on a part of the Fort George Wright Military Reservation that was previously homesteaded by James Gannon in 1893. Initially CCC Company 949 found a “bare desolate place with buildings scattered here and there with no sidewalks, no lawns and the grounds overgrown with weeds.” The CCC enrollees built improvements and a later arrival described the camp as “worthy of being called a home, with its painted buildings, cement walks throughout, spacious lawns and bordering shrubberies.” The camp included four barracks, a mess hall, an infirmary, a bakery, quarters for administrative staff and garages.

The CCC was tasked with building park facilities that would better serve visitors. At Riverside State Park, primary projects involved widening, grading, and stabilizing roads to access the area’s features. Eventually the roadways were combined to provide a looping parkway on both sides of the Spokane River. On March 15, 1939, Governor Clarence D. Martin approved House Bill # 235, designating the loop road as the Aubrey L. White Parkway, honoring the “Father of Spokane Parks.” In 1992, a portion of the parkway that passes by the site of Camp Seven Mile was closed to motor vehicle traffic and incorporated into the Spokane River Centennial State Park Trail, which extends from the Idaho border to near Nine Mile Dam.

CCC Company 949 also developed trails, parking areas, a kitchen shelter and a restroom at the Bowl and Pitcher campground and day use site which has become an iconic location in Riverside State Park.

Perhaps the signature CCC legacy in the park was the suspension bridge across the Spokane River at the Bowl and Pitcher site. All of the parts for the suspension bridge were precut and loosely put together in an area near Camp Seven Mile. When everything was complete, the bridge was taken apart, loaded into trucks and carried to its destination where it was reassembled to cross the river.

Looming conflicts in Europe signaled the end of the CCC program in 1941.

Spokane House Interpretive Center

In 1940, it was proposed that the CCC enrollees construct a replica of Spokane House. The National Park Service (NPS) began preparations for an archaeological investigation of the site prior to construction, to be carried out by CCC workers under NPS supervision. The closure of CCC Camp Seven Mile ended the project.

In 1947, Aubrey L. White and Joel Ferris of the Eastern Washington Historical Society proposed an NPS archaeological exploration to reveal the locations and structural details of Spokane House. The project was approved by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) on June 30, 1948.

In September 1950 NPS Archaeologist Louis R. Caywood began an excavation to delineate the outline of the former trading post. Additional work was carried out in 1951, locating one of the bastions of the Pacific Fur Company building constructed in August 1812. A burial, presumed to be that of Jaco Finlay, in a coffin with some personal effects, was also recovered.

Subsequent archaeological work in 1952-1953 by University of Washington archaeologists under the supervision of the NPS further delineated the extent of the Pacific Fur Company’s Spokane House. Archaeological studies by Washington State University in 1962-1963 recovered 860 artifacts, 55% of Indigenous origin, confirming active inhabitation of the site for several thousand years.  

After the completion of archaeological studies in 1963, there were recommendations to use the results to interpret the story of Spokane House at the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers.

The Spokane House Interpretive Center was dedicated on June 19, 1966, with exhibits illuminating the story of the first long-term non-Indigenous settlement in today’s Washington State.

On July 25, 1976, the remains of Jaco Finlay were reinterred at Spokane House, through the efforts of Jeannette Whitford, a great-granddaughter of Finlay and board member of the Eastern Washington Historical Society.

Riverside State Park Expands

In 1962, the WSPRC acquired a portion of the Fort George Wright property when it was declared surplus by the federal government. The 540 acres acquired now forms the heart of the park’s equestrian area.

In 1978, the WSPRC acquired an additional 250 acres of property declared surplus from the Camp Seven Mile Military Reservation. This property included the site of the former CCC Camp Seven Mile and the section of the Aubrey L. White Parkway that was later closed to motor vehicles.

In 1984, the WSPRC acquired 343 acres in the valley of the Little Spokane River close to “The Great Gathering Place.,” beginning a process with Spokane County and other stakeholders to conserve the open space, wildlife habitat and water resources of the Little Spokane River watershed.

In 1990, the Nine Mile Hydroelectric Power Plant Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1995, the WSPRC entered into an agreement with Avista Corp. (formerly Washington Water Power) to lease the 10 cottages on the site, providing homes for park staff and preserving the historic structures.

The park’s signature suspension bridge across the Spokane River near the Bowl and Pitcher formations was rebuilt to updated standards while retaining the rustic character of the original CCC design. The refurbished bridge was dedicated on May 27, 1999.

Riverside State Park continues to provide an inviting place for Spokane’s residents and visitors to experience the deep and varied stories of this place.