Monday, July 14, 2014

Spokane's Earliest Monroe Street Bridge


No one of you better own up to remembering this Monroe Street bridge over the Spokane River! This "rickety wooden affair" was erected in 1889 and burned down in 1890 to be replaced by a steel bridge. Click to www.historylink.org and then "Monroe Street Bridges" to read a great article all about our several bridges that crossed the Spokane River below the falls on Monroe Street.

The back of this undated postcard reads:  "This city is located on the Spokane River, which plunges through the center of the town in a series of three cascades, falling 132 feet in a quarter of a mile, and in one and a quarter miles 150 feet. The climate in this sheltered valley gives cool summers and mild winters. The business part of the city is along the lower stretch of the river, where the great water power of the fall is turned."

What buildings from this postcard image do you recognize?  I see the courthouse and the flour mill is all. Look how empty the city is on the horizon!

4 comments:

Miriam Robbins said...

The courthouse was finished in 1895, so likely this is not the rickety wooden bridge that burned in 1890, but the steel one that succeeded it. :-)

Great postcard!

Charles said...

I agree, but the steel bridge was rickety also, most people said it shook a lot when a street car crossed it and many refused to even use this bridge fearing it would collapse at any moment. I see the Great Northern Bridge across the Falls, and I think the building in lower right is the depot for the electric railroad to Coeur d'Alene which was later replaced by the Sears store and today Spokane Public Library.

Garret Fractolin said...

Hey Donna - Thought you might be interested in looking up more records and pictures from Spokane! Just updated County-Clerks.com w/ contact info for every county clerk in the USA Spokane County Clerk

Cheers - Garret

Charles said...

Garret The Spokane County Clerk does not have any Spokane County Marriage Licenses, they are all online at the Washington State Digital Archives, and the court records are going to be there eventually also.