Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane University, a new institute of higher learning, announced that it had bought a tract of land in the Spokane Valley.

Trustees had been searching for months for a suitable location and found one “about three-and-a-half miles from the city limits and one-half mile south of the Apple Way.”

The grand new buildings proposed for the new university would be “the most conspicuous objects seen by incoming traveler on half a dozen railroads.” The trustees announced a campaign to raise $500,000.

Spokane University came to fruition later in 1913 and would become an important institution in the Valley for two decades. However, the Great Depression was unkind to Spokane University. It closed in 1933, reopened briefly as a junior college and eventually moved to a new campus on the South Hill under the name Spokane Junior College. It, too, was short-lived.

However, Spokane University gave rise to a number of place names in Spokane Valley, including University Road and University High School (which once occupied the old university campus).

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1917: The U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.