On the Site of Horse Slaughter Camp, Colonel George Wright’s troops in September 1858 shot 700 horses belonging to a band of Indian herders, in order to prevent the continuation of the war. For years farmers used the “bone pile” for fertilizer, and even today (as of 1941) bones of the slain ponies are occasionally found.

A community of garden tracts that was once the center of extensive irrigation; but shortage of water led to retrenchment. Central Valley High School, at the western edge of the village, was completed in 1928, and had a five-acre playfield. The building was demolished, however, replaced by the new Greenacres Middle School.

Once a trading center for prosperous truck-farmers, who grow and ship great quantities of cantaloupes and tomatoes.

Originally one of the larger truck farming communities in the region, Opportunity is now lined with one- to two-story commercial buildings (ca. 1910s and 1920s). Most notable is Opportunity Hall, home of the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum. This inspirational town name was selected to attract investment, when the it was platted. For many years the Washington State Patrol had a radio program entitled “This Could Be You,” With the stretch...

Points of Interest

Opportunity Township Hall

A. T. Dishman founded this eponymous town in 1889, shooting the granite cliffs just south of town to open a quarry. The Dishman family started a trading company in 1900 and had extensive real estate interests in California, a fishing business in Mexico, and a local building construction company. As of 1941, modern business buildings lined the highway, and during the growing season the town was a busy shopping center....

Spokane’s Public Library’s system of branches began in 1905, when one was opened in the basement of a school on the west side of Hangman Creek. In 1912, Andrew Carnegie promised $70,000 for the construction of two permanent branches. $17,500 was allocated for the construction of the East Side Branch, designed by architect Albert Held, which served the city until 1980.

The highway climbs gradually but steadily. The southern extremities of the Pend Oreille Highlands and Mount Spokane appear darkly purple. Scabrock vestiges of the lava plain that survived the eroding glacial waters of prehistoric times are visible. The buttes form the eastern end of the Spokane Divide, a small distinct fold in the earth’s crust originating in the Badger Mountains. The highway runs through a barren plain sprinkled with dry...

Mile: 279

A rustic stone pyramid, nine feet high, commemorates the site of the Battle of Spokane Plains, fought on September 5, 1858. Rumors that the Mullan Road would bring a flood of whites into the region had caused an uprising of allied Coeur d’Alene, Palouse, and Spokane Indians. Colonel George Wright, with 700 men, decisively defeated the Indians at this point after a running battle from Four Lakes. The monument is...

Mile: 275

A cluster of neat houses and buildings marks this spot, founded in 1878, a milling point during the 1880s. Deep fishing holes are formed by Deep Creek Falls, and there is a trout farm near by. The town was platted by Daniel, Alfred, Lucy, and Nancy Stroup on May 14, 1883. Its first name was Deep Creek Falls, which is descriptive of the location. It became Deepcreek in 1894 and...

Mile: 272

This town came into existence after enterprising settlers dug a well here, proving to railroad engineers that water was available. It once was called Capp’s Place, but the name was changed to honor civil engineer C. F. Reardon, who was in charge of construction on the Central Washington Railway after the line was extended through the site in 1889. Mule shows, at which especially fine animals of the Northwest were...

Mile: 264

This tour traverses an uneven plateau, broken here and there by small hills. The greater part of this area was once planted to wheat, with large, well-cultivated farms and usually weatherworn and dilapidated houses and barns. Gradually the terrain becomes more rugged, and the hills, partially covered by scraggly bull pine, crowd closer to the highway. Alarmed by passing automobiles, plump ground squirrels, numerous in this section, tumble into their...

Mile: 244

This town was named about 1889 by engineers for the Northern Pacific Railway, because Brown’s Butte, overlooking the town on the south, is the crest of land, at an elevation of 2,462 feet, in the Big Bend Country. The town made headlines August 5, 1902, when Harry Tracy, notorious outlaw, committed suicide here. Tracy had roamed the country as a desperate criminal until finally confined in the Oregon State Penitentiary....

Mile: 230

Hartline, with its row of towering wheat elevators along the railroad tracks, owes its economic existence to the fertile wheatlands surrounding it. The townsite was part of the holdings of John Hartline. West of Hartline are evidences of a large lake that once flooded the area. According to geologists, this silty depression among the scablands, known locally as Dry Alkali Lake, is a part of the Hartline Basin. Glacial deposits...

Points of Interest

Hartline School

Mile: 201

This is the only point between the site of Coulee Dam and Soap Lake, where the Grand Coulee can be crossed. In the early days of the region, Coulee City, incorporated in 1890, was the junction point of the railroad and stage lines running to points along the Columbia River and to the Okanogan country. Guy Waring, in My Pioneer Past, comments: “At Coulee City the branch train arrived too...

Mile: 191

In 1883, four days after Lincoln County was created, territorial legislators cut out of it another county, and named it for Stephen A. Douglas. This town is in the bottom of a small coulee, southeast of Waterville.

Points of Interest

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church

Mile: 154

Yellow pines grow on steep rocky slopes in this picturesque canyon. Many hairpin turns, cut from rocky walls, permit brief glimpses of the road far below in the canyon. As you reach the bottom of the canyon, after a 2,000-foot descent, the road winds among willows and cottonwoods.

Mile: 143

At the mouth of Pine, or Corbaley, Canyon, on the Columbia River, it was founded by J. B. Smith in 1886. A ferry (50 cents daytime, 75 cents at night) once connected with Entiat. According to Smith, the lore went that Orondo was the superintendent of the ancient Lake Superior copper mines, and had about 1,000 miners under his charge when their native continent of Atlantis sunk beneath the ocean....

Mile: 140

This town lies at the east end of an early steel bridge spanning the Columbia River connecting it to Wenatchee, which became a leading apple producer once irrigation hydrated the land. Spurred on by the construction of several irrigation projects, the once barren land of the Wenatchee Valley was quickly developed into a leading agriculture area. The newly watered valley was planted with fruit trees, and Wenatchee and the surrounding...

Points of Interest

Gensinger Farmstead

Mile: 3

Outside of Wenatchee, the highway becomes a narrow lane between apple orchards, a foam of bloom in the spring. At the opening of the harvest season, which begins early with peaches, pears, and soft fruits, the valley is the mecca for thousands who seek work in the orchards. Men, women, and children in all sorts of vehicles invade the city, crowd the auto camps, and fill the camps established on...

A typical apple-country town, with conspicuous warehouses and attractive school. Monitor is a community six-and-a-half miles northwest of Wenatchee on the Wenatchee River. The name was chosen by townsite platters for reasons which are not of record, and which appear to have no local significance. Prior to platting, the place was known as Brown’s Flats.

Points of Interest

Burbank Homestead Waterwheel

In 1907, the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company constructed a two-span steel pin connected Pratt truss over the Wenatchee River. This 320-foot structure consists of two 140 foot steel trusses, and two 20-foot timber trestle approach spans. Each truss is composed of seven 20 foot panels, and rests on two pairs of riveted steel cylinder piers which are filled with concrete, and are braced by two eyebars with turnbuckles....

Shaded by locust and maple trees, this is an orchard community but perhaps best known as the home of “Aplets, the confection of the fairies,” a sweetmeat flavored with apple juice and enriched by walnuts and spices. Tours are available of the Liberty Orchards Factory, which makes Aplets and Cotlets along with other fruit candies and chocolates, at the corner of Aplets Way and Mission Ave. Cashmere’s main commercial street...

Points of Interest

Cottage Avenue Historic District

The Pioneer Village

The tour follows the banks of the winding Wenatchee River, above which rise foothills dotted with clumps of pines. Orchards claim every available foot of valley land. Dryden, a fruit-packing and shipping center, was named by the Great Northern Railroad in honor of a noted Canadian horticulturist. In 1907, it was named by Great Northern Railway officials, for an eminent Canadian horticulturist who accompanied James Hill on a tour through...

Points of Interest

Johnson Barn

The lodge, heavily altered from the original structure, is now a restaurant and trading post. Across US 97 (Old Blewett Rd.) are campgrounds and Ingalls Creek Road. Ingalls Creek is a small community on the Peshastin River opposite its mouth. Captain Benjamin Ingalls led a party of surveyors and guards, over two hundred men in all, over the Wenatchee Mountains around 1855. He is reportedly the first person to discover...

Mile: 178

Prospectors returning from British Columbia’s Cariboo and Fraser districts in 1860 wandered into the foothills of the Cascade Mountains and began placer mining on the creeks. The town was named Edward Blewitt of Seattle, who operated a gold mining company that owned many of the claims in the area. At one time, more than 300 miners worked in the area. Prior to 1879, Blewett was reached only by trail; in...

Points of Interest

The Blewett Arrastra

Mile: 174

Below Sheep Mountain, this was a Forest Service Guard station. Shaser Creek rises from below Miller Peak and flows east to Peshasten Creek in southwest Chelan County. A blockhouse was built on the creek in 1878 on the G.W. Shaser farm to protect local residents from possible Indian raids.

This is a sulphur spring on Baker Creek around which a forest camp was built.

Mile: 156