Cemetery’s Founders Wanted Park Site Of Proposed Trail Was Once Donated To City

The founders of Riverside Memorial Park probably would disagree with board members who oppose running the Centennial Trail through land owned by the cemetery.

While the current board contends trail users would disturb cemetery visitors, the founders apparently wanted the area to be used for recreation as well as graves.

In 1912, two years before the Riverside Park Co. opened the cemetery, John Finch and his partners donated 105 acres to the city.

The gift included about 68 acres, part of which has since been developed as burial areas. Another portion of that 68-acre tract is the undeveloped Spokane River shoreline where trail supporters would like to extend the popular path.

The gift came with one condition: The city had to turn the land, worth about $125,000, into a park.

Informal plans called for ballparks, playgrounds, and a series of dams on Latah Creek for skating in winter and canoeing in summer.

Legendary park board President Aubrey L. White envisioned a trail “with rustic seats and rest spots” overlooking the river.

The city never developed the land, and in 1934 gave back the portion sandwiched between developed areas of the cemetery and the Spokane River. The city still owns other land donated by Riverside Park Co., but none bordering the cemetery.

In February, board members for the Fairmount Memorial Association, which runs the cemetery, rejected a proposal to route the Centennial Trail on the same parcel of land Finch and his partners donated to the city.

An embankment covered with native shrubs and Ponderosa pines would screen the trail from burial areas. The trail also would be fenced, under a proposal submitted by Friends of the Centennial Trail.

Still, cemetery board members said, bicyclists and joggers who use the trail could disrupt funerals and disturb mourners.

The city Plan Commission has scheduled a public hearing to discuss the proposal in September.

Commission members hope to mediate a compromise between trail builders and cemetery officials. As a last resort, the city could condemn the land and buy it from the cemetery - a move cemetery officials say they’ll fight.

Otherwise, the trail will lead around the cemetery, using the shoulder of Government Way and forcing trail users to contend with automobiles.

Duane Broyles, Fairmount’s general manager, said the 1912 gift did not come up during recent conversations about the Centennial Trail.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said.

Despite its name, Riverside Park Co. was a land-development firm, Broyles noted. He suspects the partners did not intend to build a cemetery when they made the donation.

“They owned that land for land speculation purposes,” Broyles said. A park next door would have increased its value, particularly if the partners built a housing development.

But if Finch and his partners hadn’t already envisioned a cemetery, it wasn’t long after their donation that they made the decision.

According to “Heritage From Heroes,” a 1993 book published by Fairmount Memorial Association, the city reversed its longstanding ban against cemeteries in 1913 - a year after the Riverside donation.

The same day, the City Council gave Riverside a franchise for a cemetery adjacent to the undeveloped parkland, author Dorothy Powers wrote in the book.

And the city’s plans for a park on the “finely wooded land” had not changed, according to the park board’s 1913 report to the City Council.

Riverside Park cemetery (now Riverside Memorial Park) opened in 1914. Finch was buried there the following year.

Exactly why the land eventually reverted back to the cemetery is not clear from city records or news accounts.

The Spokesman-Review, which heralded the 1912 donation as “one of the most important ever made to the (park) board,” didn’t write about the 1934 transaction. Nor did the Spokane Daily Chronicle or the city Gazette, the official weekly record of city business.

The quitclaim deed was signed by Mayor Leonard Funk, who died in office the following year. The popular Democrat was not buried in Riverside, but at a family plot in Fairmount Memorial Park.

, DataTimes