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| Photo from NPS: Site Entrance |
One of the last frontier forts built in the West.
Yesterday was forecast to be sunny and 80 degrees in the Inland
Northwest so we decided to take a long drive and wound up at Fort Spokane, Washington.
It’s arguably a long drive (who am I kidding? It’s out in the middle of
nowhere). But it was worth the time in the car. Fort Spokane is a beautiful site that is loaded with history.
The Fort is located where the Spokane River enters the Columbia in northwest Washington state. It’s an hour-and-ten-minute drive from
Spokane (60 miles west of the city) or a four-and-a-half-hour drive from
Seattle (250 miles east). Today, the fort is inside the Lake Roosevelt National
Recreation Area and is managed by the National Park Service.
In the 1860s and 70s, more and more settlers entered the Inland
Northwest. Conflicts between those settlers and Native American tribes at times
turned violent. Most notably the Nez Perce War (1877) and the Bannock War
(1878) were fought over the forced resettlement of those tribes. In this area
of Washington, the Spokane and Colville reservations had been created north of
the Spokane River. Fear of those tribes leaving the reservation caused the local
people to call for a permanent military presence. As a result, Fort Spokane was
established in 1880. By 1884 there were twenty-five permanent structures. That
included barracks, an administrative building (headquarters), a schoolroom, and
an icehouse. At its height, the fort had fifty buildings housing up to three
hundred soldiers, both infantry and cavalry.
Soldiers at Fort Spokane never had any engagements with the
local tribes. In fact, their presence was more of a deterrence to settlers
encroaching on reservation land, rather than the other way around. The
Spanish-American War in 1898 required the troops stationed at Fort Spokane to
be deployed elsewhere. The empty fort was turned over to the Colville Indian
Agency which established an Indian Boarding School in 1900. With the
establishment of local schools on the reservations, the number of students at
the school fell and the school closed in 1916. Fort Spokane was then turned
into a hospital and tuberculosis sanitorium. That facility closed and the site
was abandoned in 1929. When the National Park Service took over the property in
1960, only four buildings were standing.
Today, the Fort Spokane Visitor Center and Museum is open Thursday
through Monday, 9:30 am to 5 pm. While the grounds are open year-round, the
Visitor Center is open seasonally from Memorial Day to Labor Day. There is no
entrance fee. Tip: Google Maps will try to have you turn onto a walking path. Turn
onto the paved road under the white sign for the fort.
Your first destination from the parking lot is the
Visitors Center and Museum. The building used to be the fort’s guardhouse. It
is full of displays and artifacts covering the history of the site and the
region. There is also a friendly and helpful park ranger on duty. It’s a small museum
but packed with a large number of photographs from when the site was a military
base and then an Indian School. The Visitors Center is one of only three
buildings on the site (along with the mule barn and magazine). The real quality
experience is taking the walking paths around the site of the fort. Some waysides tell you what building used to stand in each location along the
way. Prepare to walk a mile or more. It was a large military installation in
its day. On a beautiful early summer day, you might find that this was the best
part of the visit.
There is no doubt that Fort Spokane is an “out of the way”
destination. I must emphasize that there are no amenities for miles. You might
want to pack a lunch. Definitely bring some water. That being said, there are
other attractions in this part of the state. Grand Coulee Dam is about fifty
miles away. There are numerous camping, fishing, and hiking opportunities along
the Spokane and Columbia Rivers. And who knows? You might find yourself driving
between Seattle and Spokane, yet again, and finally decide to take the road
less traveled.
References:
NPS Website for the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area and Fort Spokane.
Anna Harbine, “Welcome to Fort Spokane,” Spokane Historical,
accessed June 7, 2024, https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/354.
Wikipedia contributors, "Fort Spokane," Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia, accessed June 7, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fort_Spokane&oldid=1173379135.
