100 years ago in Spokane: Gas shortage grips city; kangaroos come to Manito

Spokane was enduring a serious gasoline shortage.

It had reached the point at which the city’s Shell stations said they would have to close down entirely if new shipments did not arrive in the next two days. Shell was already rationing commercial users.

“The people are becoming very insulting and unreasonable in their demands for gasoline,” an exasperated Shell manager said.

Auto traffic in Spokane had “noticeably decreased,” and a number of cars were abandoned on the streets after they ran out of gas.

The gas shortage was also threatening to cut into what Spokane boosters hoped would be a record summer tourist season. So far, however, tourists were not being delayed.

That was partly through the efforts of the Spokane County Good Roads Association, which is “making special efforts to see that bona fide tourists are supplied, so that they may pursue their journey.”

The head of the association noted that “people are using all manner of excuses and pleas in order to secure the precious fluid,” but his organization was supplying gas only to genuine tourists.

From the zoo beat: The Manito Park Zoo received some unusual animals: two young kangaroos.

Zoo officials traded a young female ostrich to a Vancouver, British Columbia, zoo in exchange for the two kangaroos.