The Park's Past
Gorge Park: Nothing is so firmly impressed on the mind of the visitor to Spokane, as regards to appearance, as the great gorge into which the river falls near the center of the city. It is a tremendous feature of the landscape and one which is rarer in a large city than river, lake, bay or mountain. Any city should prize and preserve its great landscape features, inasmuch as they give it individuality. Chicago has spent millions for its Lake Shore parks. New York has spent more millions on its great Riverside Park and Drive extending for many miles along the Hudson River. Many instances could be enumerated showing that the wisdom of preserving such landscape features has been recognized and acted upon by making them enjoyably accessible by laying out parks and parkways along them.
The river gorge within the built-up part of Spokane has already been partially “improved,” as one might ironically say, but it is questionable whether any considerable portion of the community is proud of most of those improvements. How much better if would have been if the gorge had been reserved from commercial development, except what was necessary to utilize the power of the falls, and if the cost of streets, sewers and houses down in the gorge had been put into developing other parts of the city better adapted for residence and manufacturing. Spokane should certainly preserve what beauty and grandeur remains of its great river gorge. . . .
“Report, Olmsted Brothers, to A. L. White, Board of Park Commissioners, Spokane,” in Board of Park Commissioners, Spokane – Annual Report, 1891-1913 (Spokane: Board of Park Commissioners, 1914),