Lights on the River: Spokane's Electric Pioneer
Near Spokane, Washington
On September second, eighteen eighty-five, a Spokane flour mill lit up. The mill's owner had purchased a small electrical generator salvaged from a decommissioned steamship and installed it in the basement. It was enough direct current to power eleven arc lights. It was not much, but it was the first hydroelectric generation in the Pacific Northwest.
Four years later, in the same year the Great Fire destroyed downtown, a group of ten Spokane businessmen incorporated the Washington Water Power Company to harness the potential of the Lower Falls of the Spokane River on a larger scale. The fire that wiped out thirty-two city blocks of wooden buildings also wiped out most of the electricity the city had. Washington Water Power scrambled to restore power to the rebuilding city.
From that emergency beginning, Washington Water Power became one of the great utility companies of the American West. In nineteen oh three, it built what was then the world's longest electrical transmission line, stretching from Spokane to the silver mines of Burke, Idaho. In nineteen fifteen, it completed the Long Lake Dam on the Spokane River, which at the time had the world's largest spillway. The hydroelectric infrastructure that Washington Water Power built over the following decades powered mines, farms, factories, and homes across a multi-state region.
The company operated under that name for more than a century before rebranding as Avista in nineteen ninety-nine. Avista is still headquartered in Spokane, still draws power from the same Spokane River that once powered the salmon harvest, and traces its corporate lineage directly to a salvaged generator and eleven arc lights in a flour mill basement.
