290318 - Spokane House and the Davenport Hotel

The March 18, 1929, broadcast of Empire Builders was the second in a three-part set of stories highlighting historical aspects of early exploration and settling by Anglos of the American Northwest.

Unfortunately, we do not have much to go on but a brief synopsis of the broadcast, as the continuity for this date is not yet located (at least not by me). Here’s how GN publicist Malcolm Breeze described the episode in the March, 1929, edition of the Great Northern Goat magazine:

“… It will be a dramatization of the pioneer life in the Inland Empire: first telling something of the fur traders at Spokane House, the earliest trading post in this area and one famed for its hospitality, dances and horse racing, and then moving on to the days of the Indian wars and treaties, finally winding up with the modern aspects of the Spokane area.”

Monument to David Thompson, at Verendrye, ND, as depicted on a souvenir postcard distributed by the Great Northern Railway. The monument was erected by the GN during the 1925 Upper Missouri Historical Expedition.

Spokane House, a fur trading post, is regarded as the first White settlement in the state of Washington. Founded in 1810 by the North West Company (under the direction of the British explorer/surveyor David Thompson), the post was the North West Company’s farthest outpost at that time in the Columbia River region. Subsequently, John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company moved into the Spokane area in 1812, building and operating their own competing fur trade outpost which they named Fort Spokane.

The two year fur-trading monopoly enjoyed by Spokane House evaporated. With news of the War of 1812 reaching this wilderness outpost in the Spring of 1813, men of the Astor-owned Pacific Fur Company switched their concerns to protecting the continued operation of Fort Astor on the Pacific coast, and sold out their interest in Fort Spokane (at a significant loss) to the North West Company. The Brits took over the larger facilities comprising Fort Spokane, but renamed their post Spokane House.

Hudson’s Bay Company took over the North West Company in 1821 and switched the post’s name back to Fort Spokane, but within three years the post was abandoned, and local fur trade operations were relocated to the new Fort Colvile, named for a Hudson’s Bay Company director, Andrew Colvile (or Colville).

In addition to Spokane House, the story of the Davenport Hotel was evidently woven into the evening’s presentation. Before you come to the conclusion that focusing part of an expensive radio program on a commercial hotel in Spokane is an irrational idea, let's review a little about this remarkable establishment. Although you might suspect the Great Northern Railway had a stake in the hotel, it did not. However, there were certainly some ties between the hotel and the railroad company.

 

When the Davenport Hotel celebrated its grand opening in September of 1914, GN President Louis W. Hill arranged for a contingent of Blackfeet Indians, under contract to the railroad and often touted as “Glacier Park Indians,” to not only appear at the hotel, but to pitch their teepees on the hotel’s roof as a publicity stunt.

For many years, the GN and several other railroads serving Spokane operated city ticket offices out of the Davenport. J.S. Bock was General Agent for the GN during the years Empire Builders aired.

One of Spokane’s earliest commercial radio stations – KHQ – broadcast from a studio on the fourth floor the Davenport Hotel, beginning in 1925. And when the GN’s Empire Builders radio series took to the airwaves, KHQ was the NBC affiliate in Spokane that citizens of the Inland Empire tuned in to hear the show.

The architect of the Davenport Hotel was a man named Kirtland Cutter. In addition to the Davenport, Cutter also offered initial designs for or served as architect for a number of structures built by the Great Northern Railway in Glacier National Park.