Visit Fort Spokane

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.

Our Oregon Field Trip: Fort Clatsop

Map image from NPS

There's a number of reasons to visit Astoria, Oregon. Beautiful scenery, the Columbia River Maritime Museum, maybe go on a Goonies hunt. But for me, a big Lewis and Clark groupie, there are three historic sites to see when you go there. The first is the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center in Cape Disappointment State Park on the Washington side of the Columbia River. There is also the Lewis & Clark Salt Cairn Historic Monument in nearby Seaside, Oregon. And the third location is, of course, Fort Clatsop just outside of Astoria and part of the Lewis & Clark National Historic Park.

Fort Clatsop was the winter encampment of the Lewis & Clark expedition from December 1805 to March 1806. The Corps of Discovery, as the expedition was called, first sighted the Pacific Ocean from Cape Disappointment. However, the explorers thought they would have better weather on the Oregon side of the river. It was here that they built a small fort. The National Park Service has built a replica fort on the site. The members of the expedition hiked from this location to the beach in today's city of Seaside to obtain salt from sea water. Today, if you are feeling adventurous, you can hike the same trail from Fort Clatsop to the monument in Seaside.

When you visit, come early in the day as this is a popular destination. There is a nice little museum and gift shop in the visitor's center. Bring a jacket, even in the summer. Because Astoria gets on average 86 inches of rain a year, even in June we had a light drizzle in the morning. Also, it is a short walk from the visitor's center to the fort. At the fort you will find docents in period costume to answer questions and give short presentations throughout the day.

The history of the Lewis & Clark expedition is well known and readily available, so I won't duplicate that here. But before you make a pilgrimage, you might want to bone up a little bit. I would of course recommend reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose for a thorough and enjoyable background. And check out the Oregon Encyclopedia, a project of the Oregon Historical Society, for some related articles and historical records online.