Visit to Fort Spokane - One of the last frontier forts built in the West

Entrance to Fort Spokane - one of the last frontier forts to be 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, and is one of the last frontier forts built in the west.

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.

Museum and NPS Headquarters of Fort Spokane

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.

Diorama of early life in the area

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.

Museum at Fort Spokane

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.

Museum display at Fort Spokane

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.

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Books by Jim Travis Broumley

The Boldest Plan is the Best

In the fall of 1941, as the U.S. Army scrambled to prepare for the war they knew was coming, a new kind of soldier was training with a new way of getting to the battlefield – the paratrooper. The first to deploy to England and the first to jump into combat, while their more celebrated airborne brothers were still training in the States. This is the story of the 509th PIB

The Bridge at El Djem

Tunisia, 1942

Paratroopers Lieutenant Jack Bell and lead scout Corporal Roland “Rube” Roubideaux might be the only survivors out of their platoon after a failed mission to blow up a bridge behind enemy lines. Now they're going back to finish the job, tagging along with a detachment of British SAS desert commandos.

The Avellino Jump

Avellino Province, Italy, 1943 Paratroopers Lt Jack Bell and Sgt Rube Roubideaux, jumped with their battalion behind German lines in Italy to take pressure off the Allies’ tenuous hold on the Salerno beachhead. But they are given an additional mission by Col Addington, the mysterious OSS officer. They need to complete their battalion’s mission while also getting an Italian scientist safely to American lines. But first they need to outwit a fanatic Nazi officer and an Italian playing both sides.

The War in Venafro

Naples, Italy 1943 Lt Jack Bell is reunited with his cousin Nadia. The only problem: she is now the head of an organized crime family, and threatens to pull Jack and his friend Captain “Doc” Allen into her world to stop an American deserter from taking over. Meanwhile, friction grows between the veteran paratroopers and some of the new men, will everyone be able to work together to fight the Germans?

Anzio

Anzio Italy, 1944 - 1LT Jack Bell and his fellow paratroopers prepare to make a beach landing in Italy. The problem is that the civilians in Naples know where they’re going before they do. Along with everything else, Jack is put in the position of escorting OSS officer Boyd Carter on a raid of a German held blockhouse to “capture” an old friend. Now Carter is wounded and Jack is a prisoner. Can Jack’s friends and their green platoon leader mount an unauthorized rescue?

Operation Dragoon

Cpt Jack Bell and the rest of the 509th PIB jumped into Southern France as part of Operation Dragoon. Before the battalion can move out to attack the Germans in Le Muy, Maj Boyd Carter shows up with a mission for Jack. Rescue an Air Corps major, nine miles behind the lines and hidden by a group of French Resistance fighters. The Geronimos are outnumbered, but "Rube" Roubideaux has a plan to even the odds.