The city of Spokane used to be called Spokane Falls.
They dropped "Falls" in 1891. One year after they figured out how to put them to work.
The falls are basalt. Ancient lava flows defined the river's path here roughly 15 million years ago. Then the Ice Age came, and with it, floods — glacial Lake Missoula, over in Montana, repeatedly draining toward the Pacific and carving the channels the Spokane River still runs through today. What looks like a pretty waterfall in a city park is actually the bottom of an ancient flood path.
The Spokane people knew this place as Stluputqu. Swift water.
They'd been fishing salmon here for thousands of years before anyone thought to dam it.
In 1889, a group of Spokane businessmen looked at the lower falls and saw something else. Electricity. They incorporated Washington Water Power in March of that year. In August, a fire burned 32 city blocks to the ground. By November 1890, the Monroe Street Dam was operational — and the falls powered the rebuild. An 18-foot rock and timber structure feeding two giant penstocks — pressurized pipes that carry water from the dam to the turbines below — down to generators in the powerhouse below the bridge.
It has been generating power continuously ever since.
The Washington Water Power building still stands on the south bank, its name still on the brick, looking directly down at the falls that built it. The original generator ran for a century. They shipped it to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. New equipment went underground.
None of this is on a sign. I had to go looking for it.
The falls are still running. Still generating. Still powering the downtown core, the same blocks that burned in 1889. You can stand at the railing, watch the water drop over 15-million-year-old basalt, and not know that directly beneath your feet is a working hydroelectric plant that has been running longer than any other in Washington state.
The city dropped "Falls" from its name. But the falls never stopped.
And that is the story behind the place.