Inland nw neighborhoods, april 12, 2015

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RIGHT NEXT DOOR 11 Inland Northwest Neighborhoods packed with character

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will be shared ds from this section A portion of procee local charities. with the following okane has lvation Army of Sp Since 1891, the Sa over 40,000 in need. Each year, e os th r fo t or pp provided su ry, clothing, including food pant e, nc ta sis as ive people rece ing services, liday assistance, ag nal training, summer camps, ho counseling, vocatio s, er elt sh , es iti cil medical fa re. habilitation and mo substance abuse re shed in 1946 Idaho was establi rth No ul Pa de t en St. Vinc 24 social ch. It now operates ur Ch c oli th Ca as

by St. Thom less, at-risk youth to serve the home service programs rough emergency lized individuals th , and other margina community meals ills development, ions at ult ns assistance, life sk co al h mentorship, leg ut yo g, lin se un co housing, and much more.

Kendall Yards Brand-new mixed-use area off to a great start

NineMile Falls Dam experience draws residents together

Millwood Special sights, sounds help make all feel welcome

Downtown

Midtown

Spokane

Coeur d’Alene

The urban living experience has never been better

Shoppers, diners, residents enjoy area’s relaxed vibe

Wandermere

Rockford

New families bond in new North side neighborhoods

Historic traditions, new outlooks combine well in south-east city

Post Falls

Vinegar Flats

Former bedroom community comes into its own

Residents find living near Latah Creek perfectly wonderful

Liberty Lake

Cannon Hill/ Cliff Park

Early tourism destination now pleasant place to call home

Neighbors love how modern life includes old-fashioned touches

Sure, there are considerations like being able to walk to shops, and to walk there along safe streets.

And it’s awesome to have a variety of housing options, public gathering places and the ability to get around with ease.

But when it comes right down to it, the best

neighborhoods are the best because … they have the best neighbors living in them.

It’s the people who add the special sauce, the cool factor, the human welcome wagon, the “special character.” Because special characters live in neighborhoods.

These are the people who get things done: Shoveling snow for an aging widower with a bad back. Improving a

vacant lot for the kids with a makeshift baseball diamond. Stretching an enormous flag from one side of the street to the other on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Standing up for the neighborhood’s weakest, most often misunderstood folks, and displaying to others outside the neighborhood basic human kindness.

This section is The Spokesman-Review’s effort to shine a light on the special places and special people that are part of a greater whole.

Great neighborhoods make for a greater Inland Northwest. We hope that you will let us know about people in your neighborhood who make it better, and in turn improve life in this place we all call home.

Kathleen Coleman Director, Sales and Marketing

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At Home in the Neighborhood

By Cheryl-Anne Millsap

When you think about the houses you’ve known, the one where you grew up, your first apartment or the place where you may be raising your own family now, chances are you don’t just picture the house.

For most of us, any mention of the word home conjures more than just the box, the four square walls and roof that shelters us. The neighborhood, the physical—and social— landscape surrounding that house, is just as important.

That’s because almost any neighborhood brings with it a unique atmosphere or relevance.

It might be the age and faded elegance of an old area, one with deep roots in the history of the city or county.

Or, it might be a location that is altogether new, or one that has grown out of a contemporary reshuffle that took what used to be an urban jungle and tamed it into a place where people want to live, work and play.

Often, when we first start thinking about a move, the neighborhood is selected first and shopped until the perfect house comes on the market.

Location, as any real estate agent will tell you, matters.

When I think of every place that I have ever lived: from my early childhood in the old house

where my mother had grown up or my teen years in the rambling Craftsman-style cottage on a street where we rode our bikes to the library and played hideand-seek in the summer, to being g a newlywed, and d later, a new mother her in the tiny house in a neighborhood od that had been planted on the site of an old dairy in the years s after the Second d World War, to the series of houses—each one just a bit bigger than the last—where we raised our four children, my memory of the time spent in each house is colored by the neighborhood around round it.

I picture the houses but I see them through the lens of the surrounding community.

I remember friends and neighbors, people who became important to me first because they lived nearby.

I am reminded of this intimacy each time I look out my window. Now, with the children gone and on their own, I live on a street near Manito Park and

all throughout the year I watch people walk past my house on their way to the gardens or the playground or the pond.

They are chattering groups of women who’ve know

one another for years. They are couples talking quietly and young parents pushing strollers or holding the hands of toddlers who stop at every crack in the sidewalk to investigate an insect or plant. They are young and old, bundled up during the winter and in shorts and flip-flops during the summer. Some live in grand old mansions and others, like me, in quirky little cottages.

Some rent apartments.

But we are all united by one element: a neighborhood that was chosen for its leafy trees, its place in the city’s growth over the last 100 yyears, and its proximity to a rare and wonderful thing: a100acre park that ssits protected iin the middle of a busy o residential re area and draws a visitors from all vi corners of the co city. cit I don’t know this is the last if th place I’ll live, but plac in a way I hope it This house, this is. T social landscape, soci suits me. And the parade of people parad who pass my window tell me I am windo alone. not al Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s CherylHome Planet P column appears each Wednesday in Pinch! Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com.

Cheryl-Anne Milsap Courtesy photo.

Your neighborhood experiences can stick with you your whole life.

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Millwood

Above: Spokesman-Review file photo. Traffic flows south on Argonne Road toward Interstate 90 in 1941 and 2011.

Opposite top: Courtesy of the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum. Millwood Grade Band May 1950.

Middle: Photo by Shallan Knowles. Friends visiting outside a coffee shop. Middle right: Spokesman-Review file photo. Shoppers walk through the Millwood Farmers Market in 2014 at its new location on Marguerite Road instead of the Millwood Presbyterian Church parking lot.

By Dan Webster Many things mark a good neighborhood. Among the most desirable are the people who live there, the style of homes they live in, the access to nature and open space they’re able to enjoy and the availability of essential services.

Hardly anyone would list an area’s background noise as top attractions. But that’s exactly what Norene Zehm mentioned when nominating Millwood as one of Spokane’s neighborhoods most worth celebrating.

“The sounds here make our neighborhood stand out,” wrote Zehm, a Spokane County resident. “On a summer weekend we hear the ‘poppop, pop-pop’ of a John Deere tractor as its owner drives to Terry’s Breakfast & Lunch.”

Summer is also the time when the neighborhood ice cream truck trundles by, its speakers calling out to potential customers with tinny renditions of “Turkey in the Straw” and “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

“There are the sounds of mowers as everyone tries to keep their lawns looking nice,”

Zehm wrote. “A lot of time there is the sound of trains.”

A lot of trains, some 55 to 75 a day, according to the Millwood City website.

But if there is one sound that marks Millwood the most, it’s the whistle that blows at the Inland Empire Paper Co. Don Sullivan, owner of The Golf Shop, hears that whistle four times a day. His business sits on Argonne Road, across the street from the mill.

“It goes off at 6:45 a.m.,” Sullivan says. “That’s the time to be at work. Noon, time for lunch.

At 12:45 p.m., time to come back to work. Then at 3:45.”

The mill’s importance to the city is evident in the city’s very name. But first, a bit of history.

According to a 1978 story in The Spokesman-Review, the area was originally populated by native tribes. “(A)n Indian village with its teepees, drying racks and sweat houses (sat) on the north bank of the Spokane River, where part of Millwood is now situated,” Dale Goodwin wrote.

Slowly but surely white settlers began moving in. As early as 1887, barely six families lived in the area. By 1927, an estimated 436 residents gathered, on Oct. 27 of that year, to vote on whether to

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incorporate. The resolution passed, and early the following year Millwood became the first incorporated town in the Spokane Valley.

According to the Washington State Name database, which is housed at the Tacoma Public Library, a dispute arose when the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Electric Railway chose the area to house a station. Initially, the railroad called the area Woodard’s Station, after the family that owned the land. But when the paper mill commenced business in 1911, it requested that the area be called Milltown.

A compromise was eventually reached that pleased both sides, which was how the hybrid name Millwood was born.

These days, the borders of Millwood run from Butler Road to the east, the Spokane River to the north, Trent Avenue to the south and Vista Road to the west. The 2010 census listed 1,786 Millwood residents, spread out over 793 housing units.

Not only is Argonne Road –first graded in 1908 – now a thriving thoroughfare, but Trent Avenue hums with an even heavier regular flow of east-west traffic.

Historically, Millwood was much smaller. While the West Valley School District now comprises four elementary schools, two middle schools and four high schools, Millwood’s first school – founded in 1900 – had just 14 students.

As Spokesman-Review reporter Lorie Hutson wrote in 2001, an eight-block square section of the city became, in that year, “the first historic district in the Spokane Valley to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”

“The district includes the older commercial buildings along Argonne Road and the neighborhood west of there,” Hutson wrote. And set as it is

off the busy traffic of Argonne, the area feels like another chapter from Spokane’s past.

“It has the feel of a small town, even though it is surrounded by the growth and all the traffic,” said Nancy Compau, formerly the head of the Spokane Public Library’s Northwest Room. “You step a block away and here is the little tree-lined street.”

That feel came from an unusual partnership between the paper mill and its employees.

According to Bobbie Beese, who nominated Millwood to for its Historic Register honor, the company bought and sold lots and set up a “revolving loan fund” to help employees build homes; furthermore, the company even provided design plans for potential home-owners.

“The result,” Hutson wrote, “was an eclectic mix of house designs, many of them built of brick or other masonry, set on small lots. This urban-style development helped preserve the neighborhood even as growth enveloped the Valley as a whole.”

While growth in the Spokane

Valley continues, especially since the incorporation of the City of Spokane Valley in 2003, vestiges of the past remain.

You see those signs of the past in the trails along the Spokane River that essay writer Zehm mentions. You see them even on the City of Millwood website, which addresses the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) of “Is livestock allowed in town?”

(Answer: “Livestock in certain areas has been grandfathered in

to zoning ordinances. For any questions, call Millwood City Hall.”)

And you see them in the sounds that resonate through the seasons. Or, as Zehm notes, the lack of them.

“A lot of time, there is quiet,” she wrote. “It’s all good.”

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Downtown Spokane

By Dan Webster A quick glimpse through Spokane’s past is bound to reveal certain things.

Indian camps located up and down the river, taking advantage of the annual salmon runs.

The arrival of David Thompson and other traders, followed by Christian missionaries. The first sawmill built at Spokan Falls (later Spokane Falls, then just Spokane).

The subsequent settlement and arrival of the railroads.

The Great Fire of 1889 that destroyed much of the original settlement. Various economic crises and gradual recoveries.

Steady growth through the century’s turn, and onward through the decades, two world wars, the miracle known as Expo ’74 and into the 21st century.

Through all of it, the face of Spokane evolved.

Those first Indian camps gave way to an environmental railroad eyesore before being transformed into Riverfront Park.

Downtown streets that were full of shoppers during World War II became thoroughfares so empty in the 1980s that Riverside Avenue resembled a boarded-up ghost town.

Suzanne Fleming remember those latter years well.

Now a retired arts teacher, Fleming grew up in Spokane. She left for California at 22, and she and her husband still own a house in San Diego. But she returned home regularly to visit her parents, and

one continuous topic of discussion was the sad state of downtown.

“I was coming here during the lean years,” she says. “We were all worried about downtown being so quiet; it was so empty. I’d come home, and feel so worried about it.”

Fifteen years ago, Fleming and her husband moved to a house in Browne’s Addition. By then, the downtown had already started to rebound. Then, the summer before last, they moved into a Riverside Avenue condo just west of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Today, she says, life couldn’t be more different, more optimistic.

The spirit of downtown Spokane, she says, is marked by “a tremendous momentum, and it’s fun to be part of the mix.”

What does she like about living downtown? “ The convenience of the location, for one thing,” Fleming says. “It’s remarkable. You’re near the best restaurants, the major theaters, live theater, Riverfront Park, the Centennial Trail.”

“And,” she adds, “it so close to the airport.”

Fleming is hardly alone in her enthusiasm.

John Nugent has been working as a Spokane Realtor since 1962.

Like everyone else, he’s seen the ups and downs of the downtown core. But after moving into a condominium building just west of the Flour Mill, he and his wife have front-row seats to the city’s urban rejuvenation.

And like Fleming, the Nugents

Left: Photo by Shallan Knowles. Boots Bakery and Lounge on Main Street is an excellent example of a spot that attracts visitors from the area plus is a good gathering place for downtown dwellers.

Opposite: Photo by Shallan Knowles. Downtown Spokane offers a wide variety of housing options – condos, townhouses, apartments – such as this location along Riverside Avenue.

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are now enjoying everything the neighborhood has to offer.

“The thing I like is it’s only a little over a mile from where my real estate office is,” Nugent says.

“The second thing is that my wife really enjoys walks down to Gonzaga, then across into the park and back around by the Carrousel.

Then back around the river. It’s a beautiful stroll, if you stop to think about it, with water all around you.”

Nugent and his wife lived for years in a house near Indian Trail.

Then one night, maybe 10 years ago, they were out for dinner with a friend at the Flour Mill. They noticed a fence around what was

used to live near 57th Avenue in South Spokane.

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Webster says. “It’s always been my pipe dream to live downtown. And it just sort of happened that there was no better time.”

Why downtown? “We wanted to simplify,” she says, “and I wanted to be able to play. We both work hard, and wanted to be able to play right outside our front door. We wanted easy access to stuff.”

Stuff like the things they most enjoy. “We love music, we love to go out and have dinner,” she says.

“A lot of our friends live downtown and come downtown, so it was just

“Friends from Portland and Seattle are blown away by how much space we have for how little we pay.” to become the condo site.

The next day, he says, they called, came down to the condo office “and made an offer.”

“Well,” Nugent adds, “we didn’t make an offer. We just bought it.”

About seven years ago, they moved in. And in addition to river and park access, they’ve enjoyed the rest of what Spokane’s downtown has to offer.

“We’ve got several restaurants within a couple of blocks,” he says. “You’ve got the Flour Mill (especially Clinkerdagger). Then, of course, you have the fish place (Anthony’s) right on the river.”

For a couple who grew up in Spokane, living so close to downtown has proven particularly special.

“It’s a real treat for us to have something like this,” Nugent says.

Tricia Jo Webster agrees. A marketing and communications manager at a Spokane economicdevelopment organization, Webster

really access to the kind of life we wanted to live.”

“We have friends from Portland and Seattle, and they are blown away by how much space we have for how little we pay,” Webster says. “Our friends are like, ‘I would pay about $1,800 for this and it would be probably a 20-minute bus ride from downtown to afford that.’ ” Compared to other Spokane neighborhoods, downtown housing availability is still relatively tight.

And the range of prices, both for purchase and rental, is wide. But for those willing and able to take advantage of it, living in Spokane’s core has pretty much everything the happy urban dweller needs.

Ask Suzanne Fleming. She’s just pleased to see the area’s rebirth.

“It warms my heart to see activity coming back downtown,” she says. “My parents were so worried. I wish they were alive to see it.”

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Wandermere

By Dan Webster The Spokane Indians that lived for generations in and around the Little Spokane River Valley had little in common with the residents of today’s modern housing developments. That much is obvious.

But both cultures do share one important quality: a sense of community.

To the Spokanes, kinship was key. Life revolved around the nuclear family, which extended to immediate cousins.

To those who live in suburban neighborhoods such as

Blackhawk, which sits in North Spokane east of U.S. Route 395 and just north of Wandermere Golf Course, that kind of kinship is more loosely defined.

To residents such as Crissy White, though, it is no less meaningful.

“Blackhawk is a pretty strong community,” says White, who has lived in the subdivision for a dozen years with her husband Todd and their two children.

“We’re very close.”

White cites one major reason for that closeness.

“I think like many of the newer-constructed neighborhoods, we were all built

at pretty much the same time,” White says. “And we all had children who were young at the exact same time.”

White, who works in sales and marketing for an area title company, was happy to have Blackhawk included in our roundup of Spokanearea neighborhoods worth celebrating.

The area is one small part of the overall development of North Spokane that began in earnest during the early 1980s; with the more recent improvements to U.S. 395 involving the North Spokane Corridor, that growth remains ongoing.

Despite the area’s changing face, though, some things remain the same. The definition of the term “neighborly,” for example.

To White, neighborly action is what happened recently when one of her neighbors incurred a traumatic brain injury.

“While buttoning up her boat at Diamond Lake, she was hit by a tree,” White says. “And our neighborhood has rallied. It’s pretty priceless. It’s a story all by itself.”

This is not the first time the Blackhawk subdivision has been singled out.

In February 2007, a group of

Above: Spokesman-Review file photo. The pond at Wandermere was frozen solid enough for ice skaters in January, 1940.

Opposite: (truck) Spokesman-Review file photo. In 1933, workers trucked in snow to the Wandermere golf course for the first Spokane Ski Carnival which featured ski jumping and attracted an estimated 22,000 spectators who clogged the highway for hours on the way to and from the tournament. (pond) Photo by Trish Merryman. Pond at Wandermere in March 2015.

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neighbors nominated resident Paul Patrick and his wife Doris as part of the Spokesman-Review’s Good Neighbor series. Patrick’s nomination cited everything from his willingness to help remove downed trees and contribute to other cleanup activities to his wife sharing her homemade pies.

“Paul embodies the neighborhood spirit,” one of Patrick’s fellow Blackhawk residents said. “He and Doris go above and beyond what normal neighbors would do.”

As with the tribes who historically populated the valley, one of the main aspects of a neighborly spirit involves family.

And it was a sense of family that appealed particularly to White, whose section of Blackhawk has more than its share of big households.

“So there are a lot of kiddos,” White says. “Our cul-de-sac had, at one point, 28 kids.”

Those children all had to be educated. And according to longtime Spokane realtor John Orr, no area school district is better than those available to students living in the Wandermere area.

The Mead School District boasts eight elementary schools, two middle schools and two well-regarded high schools: Mead and Mt. Spokane.

“When you talk about Wandermere, and that area, the first thing that comes to mind – and I think this would be true of most of the Realtors in town – is the school district,” Orr says.

“The Mead School District has such a positive reputation.”

“We’ve had people come to town and say, ‘Well, I’ve talked to my girlfriend, and she said I should live in the Mead School District,’ ” Orr adds. “That’s the central feature.”

But hardly the only one.

Yes, Blackhawk is a standard neighborhood, with paved

sidewalks, driveways and cul-desacs such as White’s. And as she points out, her house doesn’t “sit on an oversized, acre-wide lot.”

Yet the area does have a feel of nature.

“It’s right off the Little Spokane, it’s near Wandermere Golf Course and there are tons of pine trees,” White says.

In fact, the area is surrounded by trails designed and developed by the nonprofit group Friends of the Little Spokane River Valley for incorporation into the Spokane County Comprehensive Plan. And aside from the Little Spokane itself, nearby 14-acre Pine River County Park offers a sandy beach, BBQ facilities and a playground.

Yet for all that natural feel, essential services from stores to

restaurants to a 14-screen movie theater, are situated in shopping centers less than five minutes away by car. The golf course, which has been open since 1929, is even closer.

“We’re close to Twigs (Bistro and Martini Bar), Fred Meyer, Albertson’s and all that,” White says.

Ultimately, though, the sense of comfort she feels comes down to the sense of community that living in Blackhawk provides, of being near people she considers more than mere neighbors.

“The biggest base of our friends is in that neighborhood,” White says. “It’s a very big social area. We knew the families that our kids were friends with.”

That familiarity is a throwback to the kind of life that past generations likely would have taken for granted.

“I never set up play dates for my kids,” White says.

“They figured it out. The community, it’s right there.”

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Vinegar Flats “Across the creek, just yards away, loom castle-high cliffs of raw basalt that block the late-day summer sun and cool the evening air.”

Spokesman-Review file photo Interstate 90 bridges frame the north end of Vinegar Flats, a scenic neighborhood with beautiful surroundings.

By Dan Webster In response to a call for short essays celebrating the remarkable neighborhoods in the greater Spokane and Coeur d’Alene area, Dennis Held offered up a poet’s view of his Vinegar Flats neighborhood.

“Ten minutes from a sweaty, blacktopped downtown afternoon,” Held writes, “I slide my aging Toyota into the dark mouth of the garage and sigh: home. I check the garden for green beans the deer might

have missed. In exchange, I get to watch them pick their delicate way from the early-morning mists along Latah Creek, my backyard’s western border.

Across the creek, just yards away, loom castle-high cliffs of raw basalt that block the lateday summer sun and cool the evening air.

“My neighbor, Lee, walks by with Rosie, his Blue Heeler, nosing his ankles. Today, I just wave, although we three often hike the creekside trails. Today I rinse my face in creek water and wait beneath the hundred-year

willow as shadows fall, listen for the yammering kingfisher to find me and yak-yak-yak his drifty way upriver, making me known, singing me home.”

And with that perfect setting of scene, not to mention mood, Held has provided the essentials of what makes Vinegar Flats so special, particularly to its residents.

Not familiar with the neighborhood? You’ll find Vinegar Flats by traveling west on Second Avenue. Just past the S. Maple Street intersection, Second becomes Sunset

Boulevard. After a quarter mile or so, merge left onto Inland Empire Way. As you gradually drop down toward Latah Creek, pretty much everything in front of you is Vinegar Flats.

The area wasn’t always known by that name. In the late 1800s, it was platted as Stafford’s Addition. Even then, the neighborhood was considered an upstart version of the more upscale Browne’s Addition. Local history tells us that Stafford’s Addition earned its nickname because of the

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fumes emanating from a vinegar plant – identified as the Spokane Vinegar Works in an 1890 Spokane directory.

As Spokesman-Review writer Susan English wrote in 2000, it was the offending fumes that caused Browne’s Addition dwellers to begin referring to Stafford’s Addition by its malodorous nickname.

These days, the smell of vinegar no longer permeates the area. Nor is there any lingering effect from the former city dump, which until the early 1920s sat at the corner of 7th and Coeur d’Alene streets.

And while little beyond the occasional artifact remains of the Indian camps that date back to before recorded history, nor of the meat markets and grocery stores that – according to English – “early in the century … thrived on the main streets – Chesnut Street and Coeur d’Alene,” the neighborhood still thrives with life.

Amid the various houses, the various free spaces, the trailer parks and several newly paved streets that tie everything together – streets that were at least partially funded by a street bond passed during the tenure of Mayor Jim West – a handful of businesses still operates.

Kop Construction sits next to the creek, working out of a renovated flour mill that dates to 1904. Two nurseries–Vicki’s Garden Center and Blue Moon Garden and Nursery–are situated on Inland Empire Way, along with Silhouette Lights & Staging and a newly opened vintage store, Lucky Detour.

“I’m from Montana,” Lucky Detour owner Celeste Shaw tells The Spokesman-Review.

Referring to Vinegar Flats, Shaw says, “I love small towns

and that’s what this feels like to me.”

The neighborhood boasts a community, too. Pat Davidson has lived on a house that sits between Chesnut Street and Latah Creek (aka Hangman Creek) since 1991.

A past chair of the Latah Creek Neighborhood Council, Davidson helps organize a regular neighborhood cleanup as well as a river cleaning and tree planting, plus disc golf tournaments in nearby High Bridge Park.

“We usually get a pretty good attendance,” Davidson says, adding that the disc golf brings

people to what he calls “one of the most beautiful, pristine, unknown parks in the city. It hardly gets used at all.”

Which brings us to one of the neighborhood’s main attractions: its proximity to nature – a situation that, Davidson says, has improved since construction on Highway 195 closed off access to the southern end of Inland Empire Way. Reduced traffic has quieted the environment and allowed animal life to flourish.

“We don’t have as much speeding,” Davidson says.

“People used to use that as a cut-off to get downtown.”

As for nature, he adds, “If

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anything, we have more of a rural atmosphere now. The last few years we’ve had bald eagles down here. I’ve had deer the last few years. Eagles, red-tailed hawks and osprey all nest down here, which is cool. And there’s marmots, coyotes and I think an intermittent mountain lion that walks along the bluff.”

The only real negative?

Increased railroad traffic, he says.

Then again, the sound of that lonely whistle bouncing off those basalt cliffs that the poet Held write about? Everyone should have such problems.

Photo by Shallan Knowles Though it has industrial roots, Vinegar Flats has become a neighborhood known for its scenery, recreation potential and nurseries.

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Rockford “The drive to Rockford is gorgeous ... rolling farm fields.”

Photo above left: ThinkStock.com, above right: Courtesy Teresa Carbone, inside Hurd Merchantile today.

Photo opposite left: Courtesy Vivian Plank, horses Red and Nick of Rockford. Photo opposite right: Fairgoers sample the food at the Southeast Spokane County Fair in Rockford in this 2005 Spokesman-Review file photo. This year’s fair starts Sept. 21.

By Dan Webster Vivian Plank wants you to know something: In September, the Southeast Spokane County Fair celebrates its 71st anniversary.

No, not the Spokane County Interstate Fair; the Southeast Spokane County Fair. The one formerly held in Waverly but for the past seven decades has been hosted annually by the little Palouse town of Rockford.

Never heard of Rockford?

If not, you’re in for a treat. Just get on Interstate 90, drive to the Pines Road exit, and then head south. Some 18 miles later, after having looped onto State Route 27 and driven through some of the prettiest hill/river/farm country in the Inland Northwest, you’re almost there.

From that vantage, you can see what drew native American tribes and pioneer farmers alike to the area: natural beauty bursting with natural resources.

Make a sharp left, drive about a quarter of a mile, and you’re at

the intersection of State Route 278 and First Street, square in the middle of Rockford – and square in a pocket of the past.

“Rockford is at the north end of the Palouse,” Plank writes in her essay hailing her location as a neighborhood worth celebrating. “The drive out to Rockford is gorgeous with trees and rolling farm fields.

The community and our various organizations are active in making this a great place to live.”

Plank, manager of the Rockford branch of Banner

Bank, might well have written that these groups are “continuing to make this a great place to live.”

Rockford and the surrounding area have always attracted inhabitants. Regional Indian tribes knew this, having roamed and camped here for generations.

It was in the late 1870s, lured by the convenient confluence of the East and South Forks of what would come to be called Rock Creek, that a group of white settlers – including D.C.

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Farnsworth and his brother John – decided to establish a town where Rock Creek merged with Mica Creek. Today’s town center sits a few hundred yards to the southeast.

In 1879 John Van Dorn started construction on what would become the area’s first drug store, the Farnsworth brothers and Albert M. Worley began work on a sawmill.

According to town history, it was the sawmill that led to Rockford’s naming. Originally opting for “Hecht’s Grove” (after another town founder, Charles Hecht), then “Farnsworth,” the settlers eventually settled on Rockford, from the natural setting of the creek’s rocky ford.

The railroad came through in 1880, and by 1900 Rockford had grown to 600 residents and some 70 businesses. At its height, in 1910, more than 1,000 people lived here.

The population of today’s Rockford is less than half that.

As of 2013, Rockford now boasts 470 residents, nearly evenly split between male (226) and female (244). The median age is 44.9, far older than that of Washington state overall (32.2). Schoolage residents attend classes in

Freeman, six miles away.

The number of businesses includes a couple of barrestaurants, two banks, two auto

Townsend bought the building in 2000 and reopened it as a store selling vintage and new items, from home décor to children’s

“Hurd Mercantile was opened

by George B. Hurd in 1889. Jill Townsend reopened it in 2000, selling vintage and new items, from home décor to children’s toys.” body shops, a pizza place, a coffee house and the obligatory commerce for a farming community – seed/grain/fertilizer stores.

One of those remaining businesses has direct ties to Rockford’s past. Hurd Mercantile was opened by George B. Hurd in 1889 and, according to a 1992 Spokesman-Review story, was “one of the largest of its kind in the entire West with ‘thousands of dollars of goods and hundreds of dollars of business daily.’ ” The original store closed in the late 1990s, but Jill

toys.

In a 2009 Spokesman-Review story, Townsend said that her store benefits from the traffic that passes through Rockford to and from the nearby Coeur d’Alene Casino.

“Traffic-wise, it’s a great

location, even though it feels like, ‘What is this shop doing in a tiny farming community?’” Townsend said.

Doing business out of the old Hurd site is an added bonus.

“It has so much history and charm -- the building is so magical for me,” she said.

Despite the fact that Rockford is less than half its original size, Plank stresses that the community still bursts with yearround activity.

“The Rockford Lions Club does things all year long,” writes Plank, who is the service club’s first woman president.

Other activities the local Lions sponsor include an Easter egg hunt, a Frog Regatta, school scholarships, the Hot August Nights Car Show, a Halloween bonfire, and Santa riding through town on a horse-drawn wagon.

A Frog Regatta? It’s a real thing that takes place each April when entrants place plastic frogs in Mica Creek and compete to see which crosses the finish line first. Money raised supports youth and community activities.

“It used to be duck races,” Plank says with a laugh. “But everybody and his brother was doing duck races and they had no ducks left. So we switched to frogs.”

Plank also credits groups such as the Rockford Women’s Club (which provides scholarships and maintains the town’s Pioneer Park); the McIntosh Grange (which holds regular forums); the Rockford Community Center (and the various training classes it offers); and the North Palouse Chamber of Commerce (which supports local business).

When asked what she most likes about Rockford, Plank points less to the natural beauty than to the energy boost she gets from the community. This is what she tries to explain to friends and family around the country.

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Kendall Yards

“There are fun community events, from BBQs to wine-tastings to movies.”

By Dan Webster Many Spokane neighborhoods are products of history.

Some areas developed by city founders like James Glover, Anthony McCue Cannon and John J. Browne date back to when Spokane still carried the word “Falls” in its name.

Time passes, however. Cities progress, life tends to modernize and new becomes the order of the day.

“New,” it turns out, is the exact word that Brittany Hopkins stresses in her essay nominating Kendall Yards as one of Spokane’s neighborhoods worth

celebrating.

“I recently moved to Kendall Yards,” Hopkins writes, “and it is a lively and unique community.

The energy and warmth is wonderful because we are all relatively new to the area and are willing to break through barriers that often exist in older neighborhoods and get to know each other.”

It’s not as if the near-80-acre neighborhood that Hopkins refers to is devoid of history.

Far from it. The adjacent West Central neighborhood, which sits to the north and west, is one of Spokane’s oldest, dating back to the 1880s.

The site itself, situated

along the northern bank of the Spokane River, was once a railroad thoroughfare. It was only four decades ago, during the changes in Spokane geography and culture associated with Expo 74, that the tracks were moved.

The land sat mostly idle until 2001 when various development plans for the area began to be proposed, many centered on elements involving a blend of commercial use and high-density urban residency.

The 2008 recession delayed things. But by 2010, when Greenstone Corporation secured approval to implement its own development plan, the economy had improved enough for things

to move forward.

Greenstone’s plans included not just 600,000 square feet of business space and some 1,000 housing units but a commitment to walking trails and an extension of the Centennial Trail.

Over the past year, business has been particularly good along Summit Parkway. Restaurants, a spa, a creamery, a tattoo parlor, a bicycle shop and a couple of art spaces have opened. And there’s room for more.

Central Food was one of the first eateries to take advantage of a site that offers a view not only of the Centennial Trail but of the Spokane River and all that lays beyond the Monroe Street

Above: Photo by Shallan Knowles. One of Spokane’s newest mixed-use neighborhoods isn’t just known for the homes but the scenic views.

Opposite: Photo by Shallan Knowles. Part of the visual appeal of Kendall Yards is a colorful 77-foot mural on the Central Food building created by Todd and Cain Benson.

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Bridge.

It’s fair to say that the restaurant offers what might be one the best views of downtown Spokane; not only do diners get to see the city bathed in the soft golden light of an approaching sunset, but those who like to rise early get to watch that same skyline outlined by the glow of sunrise.

Owner David Blaine, who gained fame during his eightyear tenure as head chef at Latah Bistro, says he was delighted to take advantage of the location.

A sense of the Spokane River, he says, is one thing that the city traditionally has lacked.

“Commercially, there haven’t really been a lot of opportunities to be close to the river,” he says.

“We all kind of think that’s the backbone of the city, so being close to downtown, on the river, like we are, it’s been where I want to work. It’s where I want to spend my day. I want to be able to look out the window and see the river going by. Knowing that that’s where I’m going to spend all my time makes it really easy to come to work.”

In a larger sense, he believes that offering his clientele access to a river view “helps build civic pride.”

“We live in a really unique area,” Blaine says, “so logically – and geographically, the way we have the falls downtown – the closer we can be to that, I think everybody’s going to love where they live.”

Which is another reason, why, as a business owner, he appreciates the overall development plan.

“It’s reassuring that they have a two-year waiting list on houses, that there’s a long list of people who want to live closer to the city, closer to the services,” he says. “Those are the kinds

of clientele that every business dreams of because they’re the kind of people who want an active lifestyle, they want to be out and about, they want to be dropping in to the neighborhood restaurant.”

Photographer Marshall Peterson, who grew up in Spokane but spent several years living in Mexico, says Kendall Yards offers him everything he wants in a living/work space.

Peterson, owner of the gallery Marmot Art Space (behind MonkeyBoy Bicycles), lives on the building’s second floor.

“It’s the ideal,” he says. “I can work and play right here.

I’m literally 12 seconds from my gallery. If I want to go get coffee, I go to Brain Freeze (Creamery).

If I want to have breakfast, I go to The Yards. If I want to have a meeting, I either meet in my gallery, or if it’s something a bit more formal I’ll

have beers down at Veraci (Pizza) or Central Food. Or if somebody wants an unbelievably fantastic meal, I go down to Wandering Table. I had one of the best meals of my life there.”

At a 2013 public event highlighting new construction in the neighborhood, Spokane Mayor David Condon expressed gratitude not just to Greenstone and the businesses moving in but to the resulting positive public response.

“That’s a huge investment not only, obviously, in dollars but investment in our community by those who have been part of our community for so long,” Condon told KXLY Television.

One of those happy to take advantage of

everything Kendall Yards has to offer is essay writer Hopkins.

“I love being close to the Trail to exercise and seeing everyone out with their beloved animals (we even have a potbelly pig!),” Hopkins writes. “There are fun community events, from BBQs to wine-tastings to movies.”

Finally, she adds, she feels safe.

“I love that I had UPS packages sitting on my porch for a whole day and nothing happened to them,” she writes.

“There is so much potential here!”

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Midtown

Coeur d’Alene

Photos courtesy Triple Play.

Owner John Geddes has encouraged his whole family to be part of the Triple Play experience, including helping researching what attractions would be the most fun for North Idaho.

By Nicole Skinner For years Midtown has lived in the northern shadows of Coeur d’Alene’s tourist-enticing downtown.

And that’s okay–the people that live and work here know that, for them, Midtown is the perfect place to live, work and play.

It’s a culturally-rich community that keeps evolving

– since the 1980s, it has seen plenty of development and revitalization efforts, from auto dealers coming and going to thrift stores coming and, well, staying.

When talking Midtown, you’re talking about the Third and Fourth street corridors between Garden and Harrison. It’s a lively urban area, which is a perfect representation of the vibe of the Lake City.

City leaders have worked to improve roads and parking, and added bike racks that are functional and works of art.

It wouldn’t be incorrect to call it the city’s restaurant district, but it has much more than good places to eat and drink.

The newest push is affordable housing and a multi-use building that will offer housing, commercial space, parking and a park.

Whatever stage of evolution the community is in or how you define its geographic boundaries, it has earned a reputation as a place for locallyowned businesses to operate, and residents who never want to leave.

Ask Wendy Gallegos, who has lived in Midtown for 20 years.

She’s enjoyed watching the improvements to the area.

What does she think makes

Photos by Shallan Knowles Above: Midtown, which includes Third and Fourth streets in Coeur d’Alene, just north of downtown, includes a variety of locally-owned vintage and thrift shops.

Opposite: Capone’s, left, has become a popular neighborhood gathering spot, as has Pilgrim’s Natural Market. The area also has some unique public art plus creative bike racks.

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Midtown special?

“The sense of connectedness to neighbors and business owners. You go to a business and you’re going to know the owners – they’re your friends too,” she says.

Gallegos originally chose Midtown because it was close to great schools, and she’s stayed long past her kids’ school days.

She feels that Midtown offers an easy lifestyle, with everything you need just a few blocks away, including her favorite spot, Kelly’s Irish Pub. Another well-known Midtown spot is Capone’s Pub and Grill.

Teresa and Tom Capone chose their Midtown location 24 years ago, partly because it fit their budget at the time, but also because they liked the neighborhood and could see its potential.

“We felt that the locals needed a spot off the beaten tourist path, and we have always

emphasized taking care of our regulars,” Teresa says.

She and other family members love being able to walk in to Capone’s and recognize most of their customers, by name or by drink, and often see other Midtown business owners there.

“We have a great rapport with the business owners in this area, some of whom are past employees,” she says.

The Capones feel tied to this area not only because they live and work here, but because of the people, employees and customers, who have helped their business succeed.

There’s a locally-owned restaurant for almost every type of cuisine you may want in the Midtown area, from pub food to sushi.

New businesses keep coming – one of the newest establishments is The Wellness Bar, located on the southern border of Midtown and downtown. The Wellness Bar offers fresh juice, smoothies and other healthy fare.

There are two new craft beer breweries, Slate Creek Brewing Co., and Daft Badger Brewing.

Or if you want to health up your beverages, visit Bare Culture Kombucha, which normally has several brews on tap, with flavors like chai, acai pomegranate and strawberry blood orange.

Midtown is a good place to live and a good place

to do business.

“The area is a little more laidback, and a little more local than other areas of town,” says Eric Hedlund, owner of EH Design.

His office is right across the street from Capones’s, in the former American Legion HQ, which he completely gutted and re-created with a look that’s slightly rustic and slightly contemporary.

He likes life in Midtown, and loves eating at Angelo’s or Syringa. He also likes doing business with fellow Midtown business owners.

For more than 20 years, the closest grocery was the Fourth Street Safeway, but in 1999, Pilgrim’s opened, offering produce and healthy food, years before customers began demanding things like “organic,” “Fair Trade” and “locallysourced.”

Owners Joe and Sara Hamilton began with a 1,200-square-foot location, and over the last 15 years, have

expanded it to 25,000 square feet. You can find organic produce and meats, homecooked natural food in the full deli, a wellness center and more.

“Many of our customers value supporting and shopping local, and that is what we are,” says Michal Bennett, the store’s marketing and events manager.

“Coeur d’Alene has shown us a lot of love and support, and we are always trying to find ways to show our appreciation through a rewards card program, events, donations to local nonprofits and supporting local businesses.”

Midtown is home to many thrift, vintage and antique shops, where you can find everything from classic clothing and antique furniture to classes to make your own jewelry.

Once considered only a north-south strip from Sherman to the freeway, Midtown has truly blossomed into a quirky hub of the city where tourists are welcome and locals love to be.

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Nine Mile Falls

“There’s public access to the water so people can kayak and waterski.”

By Mariesa Stokes “If Spokane is near nature and near perfect, we’re nearer to nature and nearer to perfect.”

Lea Noble laughs when she says it, but she’s far from joking. Just ask anyone who lives in Nine

Mile Falls to describe their town and they’ll mention rich history, unbeatable outdoor recreation and an incomparable sense of community.

The uniqueness of Nine Mile Falls starts with its geography.

Located along the Spokane

River, the community spans two counties – Spokane and Stevens – and is linked by a mail route and school district. The unincorporated commuter town is home to Lake Spokane and is flanked by the Nine Mile Dam and Long Lake Dam, a structure

so massive it once held the title of tallest dam in the world.

First inhabited by settlers in the early 1800s, the area began as a center for salmon fishing and a hub for the global fur trade. The trading post, Spokane House, was the first

Above: Photo courtesy Dannette Taylor. Residents of Nine Mile Falls have a lot to love about their community, starting with the dams.

Opposite: Photos courtesy Kelly Tareski Photography/Nine Mile Community Club. Many Nine Mile Falls residents say they appreciate how willing the community is to come together, such as Easter egg hunts and Dam Days activities.

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commercial site in Washington.

The surrounding area is known to be the first permanent European settlement in the state.

In the early 1900s, Washington Water Power built a dam at the Nine Mile Falls section of the Spokane River to power rail cars in Spokane. Dam workers moved their families in, and the town took root.

Many homes in this bedroom community sit on more than one acre. Most of the residents commute to Spokane for work.

Some say the beautiful, peaceful drive is a great way to strip the day away before getting home.

Tony McBride says the 20to 40-minute trip is worth it.

“It takes a little bit of time to get away from the mechanized mayhem of Spokane and get back to God’s country.”

The locals say just about everyone is here because the area offers so many ways to enjoy nature. The location was perfect for the Nobles.

“We’re close to Spokane but closer than other lakes, so we can quickly and easily launch our boat. There’s public access to the water so people can kayak and waterski. In the past, some of the colleges have even brought their rowing teams out here to practice.”

Nine Mile Falls has places to camp, explore and reflect. It is home to the Riverside State Park Headquarters, the beginning of the Centennial Trail and the Nine Mile Recreation Area.

“Growing up here,” says Stacey Calkins-Quimby, “I could go hiking literally outside my back door and be gone for hours without seeing another person.”

Fourth-generation resident Ann Fackenthall left for 30 years but returned to live on her family’s homestead.

“I missed the whistle of wind in the pine trees, and bullfrogs.

Each spring when the croaking

starts I go outside and call my sister in D.C. so she can hear the frogs.”

Fackenthall also keeps her eye on the skies. “I always know it’s spring when the redwing blackbirds show up. And it’s so much fun to watch the ospreys nest and perch on the island and fish.”

“Every day we see bald eagles flying high and proud over our community,” says CalkinsQuimby. “Our high school and junior high school mascots are the Eagles and that is a great representation of Nine Mile.”

Nine Mile Falls schools are said to be among the best in the state. But it’s not just what happens in the classroom that keeps them getting high marks.

“The school system is the town’s largest employer,” says District Superintendent Brian Talbott. “The entire staff is involved, committed, and dedicated to helping our students excel in school and in life. Folks out here have the ‘it takes a village’ mentality. There’s a great partnership between the schools, businesses and the community. I believe we have a piece of Americana.”

Close to 100 percent of the businesses in Nine Mile Falls are locally owned, and most are heavily involved with the town’s events. There are weekly potlucks, and several times a year the folks get together to celebrate their community and their culture.

“Everyone turns out,” says Fackenthall. “On Father’s Day the fur traders come back for a reenactment at the Spokane House Encampment. We also have an annual Easter Egg Hunt, the Northwest Renaissance Fair and Tum Tum Cowboy Poetry Gathering. The biggest draw is the Lake Spokane Independence Day

Celebration, which includes a big breakfast, car show, vendors and a huge fireworks display you can see from both sides of the lake.”

The community’s most iconic celebration – Dam Days – was originally held from 1984 to 1991.

Last year nostalgia made way for a comeback.

“I posted ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we brought back Dam Days?’ on social media,” CalkinsQuimby explains. “Many locals responded saying they were willing to try and make it happen. With a great group of residents, volunteers and the Nine Mile Community Club we held Dam Days for the first time in 23 years. During the 2-day event we raised enough money to give more than $3,300 to parentteacher groups in our school district.”

Calkins-Quimby adds the community worked so hard to create a successful event last year that they’ll be holding Dam Days again this August.

“Nine Mile may be small in size, but it’s large in heart.”

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Cannon Hill / Cliff Park

“The whole area is a little slice of history.”

By Dan Webster Kay Edmonds has lived near Spokane’s Cannon Hill Park for some 36 years. This fact alone gives her ample standing to write an essay that celebrates her South Hill neighborhood as one of the most remarkable in the Spokane area.

She tells us that her threeplus decades of residency

provides her the kinds of seasonal memories that would cause Norman Rockwell to blush. And, yes, Edmonds mentioned Rockwell by name.

In style, if not tone, Edmonds’ essay contrasts with the artwork of the man many consider the dean of mid-20th century illustrators. In its mention of neighbors and family, each peppered with first-name familiarity, Rockwell’s spirit fully

emerges.

That very familiarity is part of what makes Edmonds’ tone so … well, Spokane. “Oh, they’ll know who they are,” she says, declining to provide surnames.

So, then, what’s winter feel like in her neighborhood? “Calls from sons, please check on ice. Teaching grandchildren to skate with stick. Christmas Eve, singing carols. Christmas morn, turkey in my cherry tree!”

How about spring? “Spring morning, coffee on my steps.

Hawks courting, Doug is running, twins are swinging, dogwoods blooming.”

Summer? “‘Summer’s here,’ bullfrogs croak. Baby ducks swimming, osprey fishing, tree climbing, Tony and Barb gardening.”

And fall? “Trees exploding brilliant colors. Mallards, buffalo heads, wood ducks and solo

Photos by Theresa Carpine Above: Residents say there’s a lot to love about living in the Cannon Hill and Cliff Park areas.

Opposite: Not everyone knows that Spokane’s Cannon Hill Park was created by the Olmsted Brothers, who also designed New York’s Central Park. People who live nearby appreciate the scenery plus the kindness of their neighbors.

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crane reflecting in pond.”

Finally, pretty much any season at all: “Take a walk with Todd to Rockwood Bakery. Walk to church, school, store or work.

Don’t want to cook? Picabu or Bennidito’s. Walk some more with kids to Scoop.”

Edmonds’ essay could, of course, apply to the larger immediate area. A few blocks north, near the bluff that overlooks Spokane’s city core, another park sits amid a stand of trees. Comprising barely four acres, Cliff Park also attracts superlatives from those who live nearby.

And like Edmonds, one of the Cliff Park residents, Barbara Loste, evokes that icon of midcentury America – Norman Rockwell – to describe what it’s like to live there.

“It feels like a throwback to the 1950s,” Loste says. “The neighbors are extremely nice, extremely helpful. But they don’t get in your face.”

And, too, the seasonal memories that Loste recalls sound much like those expressed by Edmonds.

“When I look out on the park in the winter, there are kids sledding,” Loste says. “People in the summer are out, they’re tending their gardens a lot. It’s almost idyllic.”

Dating back to 1908, but used traditionally as a lookout by members of the Spokane Indian Tribe, Cliff Park is marked by a tree-shrouded peak that rises above the surrounding streets. The rock-lined grassy area at the park’s highest point (some 2,260 feel above sea level) feels like a child’s dream fort.

Renovated steps lead smoothly to the top, which has been used for everything from stargazing to group drumming, Easter sunrise services to simple sight-seeing, In contrast, the larger Cannon

Hill Park, where Edmonds lives, is named after one of the city’s founders, Anthony McCue Cannon. It is part of the

Edquist says, adding that her house is also just two blocks west of Manito Park.

“We love that the two parks

“Renovated steps lead smoothly to the top, which has been used for everything from stargazing to group drumming.” development that occurred in the years following the Great Spokane Fire of 1889 and grew as the calendar flipped over to the new century.

Originally a wetlands, Cannon Hill Park (first name: Adams Park) itself was the site of a brickyard that took advantage of a natural clay deposit. From that deposit came many of the bricks that were used to construct both Spokane’s first streets and many of its buildings. When the clay played out, the Spokane Park Board turned to plans devised by the New York-based Olmsted Brothers architectural firm, best known for their work on Manhattan’s Central Park.

And with that plan in mind, the board transformed the area into one of Spokane’s most memorable open spaces.

In the fall of 2013, Kristin Edquist moved with her husband and two young sons to a house situated, she says, “two steps” from Cannon Hill Park. What attracted them to settle there was the area’s appeal, from the park itself, to the fact that shopping facilities lay within walking distance, to the fact that the neighborhood already boasted a number of other couples with young children.

“There are lots of little kids that our sons can play with,”

are right next to each other,” she says. “Each is beautiful in its own way. We love that there is actually some wildlife here in the pond. There are different ducks migrating in, herons and the occasional osprey. We have all this natural beauty all around us, but then it’s more social. It’s in the city, too.”

In her essay Edmonds mentioned pond ice. On those occasions when Cannon Hill’s pond freezes over, Edquist is among those whom you’ll see donning skates and attempting to impersonate Michelle Kwan.

“I wish it had frozen more this year,” Edquist says. “It’s

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fantastic. It’s my own little winter wonderland right here.”

Winter provides the neighborhood’s residents special opportunities to gather together, whether they work at “grooming” the ice for skating – “We all shovel a little piece of the pond and then everybody can use it,” she says – or caroling on Christmas Eve. These are the activities, Edquist says, that makes Cannon Hill “feel like an oldfashioned neighborhood, right here in the 21st century, which is what I like about it.”

Whether we’re talking about the neighborhoods comprising Cannon Hill or Cliff Park, or those situated amid the dozen streets in between, one thing is clear: As Loste puts it, the whole area “is a little slice of history.”

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Liberty Lake Spokesman-Review photo archive Above: Liberty Lake in 1938 was a favorite tourism destination. Today, its scenery still attracts visitors from Idaho and Washington.

By Dan Webster In her letter nominating a Spokane-area neighborhood worthy of celebration, Liberty Lake resident Rachelle Stocum was succinct.

“I love living in Liberty Lake,” she stated.

But she was just getting started. Stocum then commenced to list reasons she believes are among “what make Liberty Lake special.”

• The July 4th fireworks show held annually at the

city’s Pavilion Park which is “community-funded 100 percent.”

• Liberty Lake Farmers Market: Started in 2002, the market is open Saturday mornings between mid-May and early October, featuring produce from up to 50 vendors. The market, Stocum writes, gives shoppers the opportunity to “eat pizza, get fresh local food, and connect with friends and neighbors.”

• Liberty Lake Regional Park: With some 3,591 acres of what its website describes as “wetlands, lakeshore, montane

forest, irrigated turf, conservation areas and an ORV Park,” the county park offers a full range of outdoor activities. Or as Stocum gushes, “camping, fishing, boating, hiking, picnic areas, playground and swimming.”

• Three golf courses: Two 18-hole courses, Liberty Lake (built in 1959, redesigned and reopened in 2010) and MeadowWood (opened in 1988), and a nine-hole course, Trailhead (established in 1973, formerly called Valley View).

• Memorial Day Pancake Breakfast: The annual Rotary

Club-sponsored event, Stocum writes, raises funds that “benefit the Honor Flight program for military veterans.”

• Liberty Lake Community Yard Sale: The 22nd-annual event takes place in June, with 200plus homes participating, and vendors selling food at Pavilion Park.

• Summer Movies in the Park: Held July through August at Pavilion Park on Friday and Saturday nights, the outdoor movie series features both classic and contemporary films.

Not a bad schedule of events

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for any community, much less one that sits some 16 miles east of Spokane, boasts around 8,000 residents and has been an incorporated city only since 2000.

But hardly surprising, considering the area’s long history.

As with the rest of the Inland Northwest (if not the whole U.S.), what we now call Liberty Lake was home to a number of native tribes – people who continued to live there even after explorer David Thompson arrived in 1808.

And those tribes held their own community-wide gatherings, including horse races and athletic events.

The Liberty Lake City website, quoting a book titled “Memories of Liberty Lake, “ says those

events “were part of an annual feed on the shores of Liberty Lake that was hosted by Andrew Seltice, chief of the Coeur d’Alene Indians. After the dinner, everyone enjoyed the horse races and athletic events where prizes were given out.”

As for the lake’s name, it was formerly known as Lake Grier – a name bestowed on it by Col. George Wright after another U.S. Army officer, Maj. William Nicholas Grier. The name was later changed to honor a French-Canadian settler, Etienne Eduard Laliberte, who anglicized his name to Steven Liberty and who both homesteaded on the lakeshore and served as a mail carrier.

Growth at first was slow.

Bureau of Land Management

records indicate that only eight homesteads sat in what is the current city limits between 1884 and 1907.

Sometime after the century’s turn, area residents constructed a school, moving it to a red brick building in 1912 (and used until 1959).

But the growth was gradual.

Electric trains began running from Spokane to Liberty Lake in 1903, the 45-minute journey costing some 75 cents roundtrip. Between 1910 and 1915, rail traffic had increased enough to earn Liberty Lake the title of “Spokane’s Inland Seashore.” As cars caught on in popularity, rail traffic decreased and, by 1926, had ceased altogether.

By the 1950s, development had spread around the lake, enough to support six resorts and four public beaches. The first golf course opened in 1959.

Andy Hoye, who grew up in Liberty Lake, remembers spending time playing pinball at one of Sig’s Resort to, what he says, was the consternation of his parents.

“It was a great place to grow up,” Hoye says.

By 1991, the last of the lakeside resorts had closed, but other opportunities presented themselves, among them the 1978 establishment of a HewlettPackard plant (which became Agilent Technologies in 1999 before closing in 2010).

And thanks to development companies such as Greenstone, which converted the former Agilent building into the Meadowwood Technology Campus, the growth has

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continued.

By 1998, the planned Meadowwood development – which, according to a Spokesman-Review story, was “designed to be a walking community with trails that lead residents to nearby parks, shops, offices and business parks” – was selling nearly 100 homes a year.

The shopping centers that now sit on both sides of N. Liberty Lake Road service the entire area, offering a wide range of resources.

Stocum, who lives close to the Liberty Lake Post Office, cited in her letter the places she has foot access to: Home Depot, Walgreens, Albertsons, Starbucks, a library, athletic club, winery, multiple parks, playgrounds, walking trails and restaurants – and the post office.

Emphasizing the affection she has for her neighborhood, Stocum closed with the same succinctness with which she began.

“We have everything we need,” she writes, “within a short distance.”

Spokesman-Review file photos (Boat photo courtesy Rebecca Nappi) Left: Horse riders gather at the cabin site high on the 7 mile loop trail in Liberty Lake County Park in 2012. Though some of the early tourism facilities are long gone, such as the Ferris wheel in Liberty Lake Park, above, the lake continues to be a great draw.

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Post Falls

“She loved to sit with her friends on the rocks near the river.”

Photos by Shallan Knowles Above: Post Falls, Idaho, offers beautiful scenery that many drivers miss while zipping past on the freeway.

Opposite: Spring is a perfect time to watch the raging Spokane River before the summer draw-down begins. Post Falls is home to three golf courses, including the Highlands, The Links and Prairie Falls.

By Nicole Skinner Have you ever felt the thrill of rediscovering money stashed in your winter coat earlier in the year when you wear it for the first time in the fall?

It’s kind of like that for Post Falls.

Occasionally dismissed as simply “that town between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene,” Idaho’s River City is one those places that some Eastern Washingtonians may forget

about on a daily basis, but are always delighted to rediscover.

Eastbound or westbound commuters may catch glimpses of cars and RVs for sale, restaurants and Cabela’s.

However, when you exit the interstate and cruise through the sprawled community, you can find all sorts of treasures which explain many of the reasons residents love calling Post Falls home.

Kim Schulze says the reason she and her family enjoy living here is the small-town

atmosphere. Plus, it’s close enough to bigger cities for anything else they may need.

“The crime rate is low and the community involvement is wonderful,” she says. “There are so many great programs for the kids through Parks and Rec, Little League, Boys and Girls Club and others.”

While you won’t find a traditional downtown core, you will find special pockets and all sorts of annual traditions that maintain strong community ties.

Every July, residents gather

for a parade and three days of food, fun and togetherness for Post Falls Days. In October there’s the Lion’s Club Haunted House, considered one of the best community spook houses in the country. There’s a robust Parks and Recreation department with a wide variety of activities, plus a lot of parks peppered throughout the city.

“As a kid, Q’emiln and Castle Park were the places to be,” explains Austin Skellenger, who grew up in Post Falls. “Once I got older, it was great to live

Advertising Supplement to The Spokesman Review an S R Media Company • spokesman.com • Sunday, April 12, 2015

somewhere that was so naturally beautiful.”

She loved to sit with her friends on the rocks near the river at Corbin Park or go thrift shopping at the variety of vintage establishments. By far, her favorite part of Post Falls is the positive involvement that law enforcement has with civilians.

“They communicate so well and are just genuinely good men and women who are looking to serve and protect their community,” Skellenger says.

In between the chain restaurants, there are also many locally-owned businesses, like Besty Schmeckpepper’s Honeycomb Hair Studio on Sixth Avenue. She loves having a business in Post Falls – it’s where many of her customers live, and it’s centrally located between Washington and Idaho.

One favorite neighborhood for many is the Highlands, which can be reached by taking the Highway 41 exit from I-90, heading north and taking Mullan Avenue east up the hill.

The Highland Park Estates neighborhood includes spacious homes, two restaurants, a golf course and the Highlands Day Spa. The pristine 18-hole Highlands course is nestled within the beautiful homes and offers a challenge to golfers of all skills.

There’s even a practice facility with a full-size grass driving range and a large chipping and putting area.

Mark Poirier, head PGA Professional and Pro Shop Manager, says it’s a course where everyone has fun, not just serious

golfers or nearby homeowners.

“With a warm and welcoming atmosphere, it’s the perfect place to golf with friends and neighbors.”

Poirier says this year, the course will bring on a new head superintendent, Ben Nelson, and hopes to offer one of the best manicured golf experiences in the area at reasonable prices.

After your round, or your pedicure, you can enjoy a meal at either The Highlands Grill & Tap House, a friendly pub; or Fleur de Sel, which offers authentic French and Mediterranean cuisine. Both of these establishments are perfect examples of the wide array of choices for diners in Post Falls.

Other excellent restaurants can be found throughout town.

Some are near the Spokane Street/Seltice area, including GW Hunters Steakhouse, which serves any and all game dishes, from buffalo burgers to elk steak to alligator; Rob’s Seafood, which offers a mean fish and chips and chowder; and Famous Willie’s BBQ, which brings what some say is the best Texas and Cajun BBQ around.

And yes, that is garlic you smell, likely coming from either The White House Grill or the Oval Office -- both offer wonderfully aromatic Greek and Mediterranean meal choices.

On the east side of town, you’ll find Nate’s New York Pizza.

Or head south on 41 and find the Post Falls satellite of Capone’s Pub and Grill, the first spin-off of the successful Coeur d’Alene establishment.

“Having been a fixture in Post

Falls for the last 10 years, we have found the growth and increased community spirit so enjoyable,” says co-owner Teresa Capone.

“Community events such as the Shoes and Brews Race and the Police and Fire Memorial Fundraiser have really brought home how generous and supportive this community is.”

Capone says business continues to be good.

“We currently are expanding our kitchen to be able to keep up with the increases,” she says.

Based on the positive comments and increased services, it’s clear that Post Falls is no longer a bedroom community – it’s the second largest city in Kootenai County. Just about every neighborhood offers something special – summer movies in the park, Christmas decoration and community-wide garage

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sales.

“Post Falls has this unique blend of attributes and sense of community that make it more than ‘that town between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene,’” said Melisa Moate, longtime resident.

She likes the walking trails in her neighborhood, the close proximity for hiking and swimming and all the parks. She loves to go to Enoteca, a local wine and specialty beer shop, for girl’s night, and also enjoys grabbing lunch at Big Bear Deli.

“I love my neighborhood,” she says.

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Advertising Supplement to The Spokesman Review an S R Media Company • spokesman.com • Sunday, April 12, 2015