Fire and ice
Inland Northwest pulls together against a volcanic eruption, an ice storm, a fire storm and an economic storm as the curtain falls on the 20th century

By Jim Kershner
Staff writer

Spokane and the Inland Northwest had every reason to be euphoric as the final quarter of the 20th century began.

The city was still basking in the afterglow of Expo '74. In 1975, Spokane was named an All-America City by the National Municipal League, largely because of Expo-related urban renewal. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter arrived in town to dedicate the new Riverfront Park, the rolling, flowing symbol of the new Spokane and the most visible legacy from Expo. Fifty-thousand spectators cheered.

The city seemed new and fresh; the region was finally on the map. Expo had accomplished exactly what its boosters had hoped. It was only the rest of the century that failed to go according to plan.

Sometimes, the problem was Mother Nature, always unpredictable, but positively nasty in three particular temper tantrums. The first big blow came on Sunday, May 18, 1980, when the strangest, grayest blizzard that anyone had ever seen came rolling in from the west. Millions of tons of Mount St. Helen's volcanic ash blew directly toward Spokane and blanketed the entire Inland Northwest with an ash carpet. Cars choked and people wandered the streets in face masks. Business, government and most normal life were disrupted for days, even weeks, but in the end, the ash turned out to be benign. The ash-enriched soil helped farmers to bumper crops of wheat the next year.

Both of the other tantrums were endowed with stormy monikers, Firestorm '91 and Ice Storm '96. Both cost lives, both resulted in massive power outages, and both caused the community to pull together, if only briefly, in shared commitment.

Yet the biggest blows in this quarter-century were not as easily repaired. The late '70s and early '80s ushered in an economic downturn that was particularly harsh in the Inland Northwest. The lethal national combination of inflation and high interest rates slammed timber, mining and agriculture, the three natural resource pillars of Spokane's old economy. Silver, the source of many turn-of-the-century mansions in Spokane and North Idaho, went spectacularly kaput in a 1980 collapse spurred by the Hunt brothers of Texas.

The rest of the metals industry also was in bad shape. In 1981 and 1982, the Bunker Hill, Crescent, Sunshine, Star and Lucky Friday mines all boarded up their shafts.

Almost every facet of Spokane's economy shared in the misery, with Kaiser Aluminum cutting back and even the new high-tech companies hit hard. This '80s malaise can be symbolized by two numbers: 13 percent and 18,000.

The first number was Spokane's unemployment rate in 1982, staggeringly high by most measures, but only half of what the Silver Valley was facing. Eighteen thousand was the number of people who vanished from Spokane's city limits, from a high of 188,000 in 1968 to a low of 170,000 in 1982. Many moved to the suburbs. The city of Spokane's population would continue to stagnate all the way through the 1980s and would not go above 170,000 until 1990. Only in 1999 would the city of Spokane's population creep back to its 1968 high. Meanwhile, population grew in Spokane County and soared in neighboring Kootenai County.

Yet, just as the community pulled together against Mother Nature, it did the same for the '80s-long economic storm. A group of business, government and labor leaders formed Momentum, whose goal was to yank Spokane out of its doldrums and get it on track for the '90s.

Momentum worked as advertised, with a lot of help from the rocketing national economy of the '90s. Momentum also had some help from high places: Spokane's Rep. Tom Foley had become speaker of the House in 1989. Did that help Spokane land, for instance, a Boeing plant in 1990? Let's just say it didn't hurt.

Foley, by the way, was voted out of office by a grateful citizenry in 1994, which would have seemed like a typically Spokane-like self-inflicted wound if it weren't for the fact that voters were voting powerful Democratic incumbents out of office from coast to coast that November.

Spokane County's population stagnated in the mid-'80s, too. However, over the entire quarter-century, the county gained 100,000 residents, to about 414,500, illustrating one of the continuing national social trends of the era: the movement from city to suburbs.

Where the people went, retail followed. The Spokane Valley Mall opened in 1997, symbolizing the urban area's population shift toward the east. Long before that, NorthTown Mall had become the city's shopping giant, luring J.C. Penney out of downtown in 1990. The demise of The Crescent, which became Frederick & Nelson in 1988 before folding altogether in 1992, ushered in a new era of vacant storefronts for downtown as well as the passing of an entire social tradition. No longer would people meet, shop and eat below the big Crescent clock. However, by the end of the century the heart of the city was beating strongly again with the opening of the new Spokane Arena and renovation of River Park Square, an upscale downtown mall.

It was in the area of Òlifestyle,Ó a word that barely even existed until 1975, that Spokane may have changed the most. Spokane had always boasted pleasant neighborhoods and excellent parks, but now the city was slowly becoming more cosmopolitan. This process began right after Expo, when the world had come to visit, and kicked into high gear at the end of the '80s with a sudden influx of new residents from California, the Puget Sound area and places beyond. Spokane residents learned to pronounce latte, hefeweizen and focaccia. Arts groups such as Interplayers sprang up, and institutions such as the Spokane Symphony and the Spokane Civic Theatre thrived.

The Inland Northwest gained an unwelcome reputation as a haven for racists, with the establishment of the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake. Yet the truth was Spokane became more hospitable to its minority communities during this period, if belatedly and imperfectly. Segregation, which existed for the entire century by custom, if not by law, was mostly gone by 1980. In 1981 Spokane elected its first black mayor, Jim Chase.

And although Spokane always had a hearty, healthy outdoorsy bent, the city's image took an unpredictable new twist with a little event called Bloomsday that debuted in 1977.

This 7.46-mile running race attracted 1,200 runners the first year, 5,000 the next and 10,000 the year after that. Before long it was the largest timed road race in the world. In 1996 it attracted an astounding 61,000 entrants. Suddenly, Spokane's image to the world at large became one of ruddy-faced cheerful health, not a bad image with which to end the century.

In the course of this century, Spokane has gone from a wild, Western boom town of 36,000 to a mature, settled city of 189,000. The railroad has been replaced by the SUV and the airport. Mining has faded and tourism has ascended. The telephone, a new toy in 1900, is now hooked up to a modem. The Crescent has been replaced by the mall, and the lakes are crowded with pleasure boats instead of log rafts.

What's next? Check out the next Century in Review, coming your way in 2099.

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