The Lower Kettle Falls of the Columbia around 1930, white water pouring between tilted rock ledges, a decade before Lake Roosevelt covered them
NPS / public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Washington · Region

Spokane & the Northeast

Spokane, Kalispel, Colville and Lakes country — the 1858 Wright campaign and Hangman Creek, Spokane Falls and Expo '74, Kettle Falls and the Ceremony of Tears, and Chief Joseph's grave at Nespelem.

5 places to explore

In May 1858 Spokane, Coeur d'Alene and Palouse warriors turned back an army column under Colonel Edward Steptoe. That September Colonel George Wright marched north with some seven hundred men to punish them. After battles at Four Lakes and on the Spokane Plains, his soldiers spent two days shooting some eight hundred captured horses near what is now Liberty Lake and burned the tribes' stores of food. At his camp on Latah Creek, Wright had the Yakama warrior Qualchan hanged within minutes of riding in, and Palouse men after him, and the creek has been called Hangman Creek ever since. In 2020 Spokane renamed Fort George Wright Drive for Whist-alks, Qualchan's wife, a Spokane woman who rode out of the camp after his death.

The Spokane River drops through the middle of the city in a run of falls. Railroads and mills crowded its islands until the city cleared them for Expo '74, the first world's fair with an environmental theme, and the fairgrounds became Riverfront Park, with the falls running through it.

North, the Columbia once dropped through Kettle Falls, a salmon fishery second only to Celilo. In June 1940, weeks before Lake Roosevelt rose over it behind Grand Coulee Dam, the Colville tribes held a three-day Ceremony of Tears, attended by thousands from across the Northwest; the dam, built without fish passage, ended the salmon runs on the upper river. The Colville Reservation, across the Columbia, is home to twelve bands confederated there. Chief Joseph, sent to Colville in 1885 with part of his band and never allowed home to the Wallowa, died there in 1904 and is buried at Nespelem.

What to See in Spokane & the Northeast

5 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Historic Sites

Chief Joseph's Grave

Nespelem

The Nez Perce cemetery at Nespelem, on the Colville Reservation, where Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt was buried in 1904 and buried again under a historical society's marble shaft in 1905.

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The Fort Spokane site around 1943, seen from north of the Spokane River, a steel truss bridge crossing the river below terraced bluffs

Fort Spokane

Davenport

An army post set down in 1880 across the river from the line President Hayes drew for the Spokane Reservation the next winter, and emptied for the war with Spain in 1898.

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The upper falls of the Spokane River spilling over basalt ledges in Riverfront Park, footbridges and downtown buildings beyond

Spokane Falls

Spokane

Where the Spokane fished under a salmon chief who shared out the catch, until a dam forty miles downstream ended the runs in 1911.

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The site of Spokane House in Riverside State Park, the trading post's footprint traced with low timber outlines in the grass beside an interpretive sign

Spokane House

Nine Mile Falls

The trading post Spokane guides led Jaco Finlay to in 1810, closed by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1826, and kept by the man who built it until he died there.

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The small hewn-log chapel of St. Paul's Mission among ponderosa pines

St. Paul's Mission

Kettle Falls

A log church built in 1847 for the summer salmon gathering at Kettle Falls, ruined by the 1930s, and rebuilt in 1939, a year before the reservoir rose over the falls it was built to serve.

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Stories from Spokane & the Northeast

History

The Soapbox on Stevens Street

In the winter of 1909 the Industrial Workers of the World set out to be arrested in Spokane, one speaker at a time, until the city gave in. More than five hundred went to jail in the first month.

5 min read

Spokane & the Northeast rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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