At 100 with nature

For 100 years, Manito Park has been the place where Spokane stops to take a whiff of the genus rosa. And just about every other kind of blooming thing. The land was deeded to the city on May 19, 1904, and this scenic patch of rocky outcrops, ponds and four natural springs has been the premier city park in Spokane ever since.

Manito is where Spokane picnicked, skated, sledded, fed the polar bears, tossed horseshoes, played tennis, caught frogs, fought pirate battles, attended band concerts, admired lilacs, perused the perennials, banged on drums, posed for graduation photos and was pronounced husband and wife.

The place has changed drastically over the decades. The bears and zoo animals vanished in 1932; the Duck Pond has been banked and abbreviated; and the old Peanut Shack has been renamed the Park Bench Cafe.

Yet it has always had a rose-scented appeal, even before 1904. And therein lies the tale of the park’s original name.

Scenic Montrose Park

Montrose Park was the name of this scenic patch of ground before 1904. Pioneer newspaperman Francis Cook named it that, and for good reason.

An 1890s newspaper ad touting lots in the area explains why: “Scattered about on the gentle slopes and the pretty open plazas, wild roses bloom in great profusion — hence the name.”

Before that, this high spot probably had other names — names given by Native Americans — but those names are lost to history. Tribes were no doubt attracted to the same attributes that attracted the first picnickers from the little town of Spokane Falls: bubbling springs, high vistas, and parklike open spaces. According to some accounts, Indians still camped in the park “above 21st Avenue” (where Duncan Gardens begins today) even after the park was established.

So when this land, originally purchased and preserved by Cook, was deeded by a consortium of new owners to the city for a park, the name was changed to the Indian word Manito.

Not that the local tribes ever called it that.

An article in the Spokane Daily Chronicle in July 1903 attempted to explain the proposed name: “The addition has been named Manita Park, referring to its elevation, which affords a fine view of the city.”

Wrong on two counts. First of all, the Indian word isn’t spelled manita, but manitou or manito (in every subsequent reference to the proposed park, the spelling was changed to Manito). Second, it was a common Algonquian word which means “nature spirits” and refers to various supernatural forces.

By accident or not, Manito has turned out to be a fitting name. This 90-acre patch of ground has continued to fill visitors with the spirit of nature, and plenty of natural high spirits as well.

Balzer’s Manito memories

C. Norb Balzer knew the brand-new Manito Park far better than most boys. His family lived in a house right in the park until 1908, because his father, Charles Balzer, was the park’s superintendent until 1910 and one of its original designers.

Even in those first years, the park was wildly popular. And sometimes just plain wild.

“Our family home was between 19th and 20th …,” said the younger Balzer in a reminiscence published in the Spokane Chronicle in 1968. “Hundreds of people came to Manito on Saturdays and Sundays. Whenever you get large numbers of people together, somebody is always getting hurt and my mother was kept busy binding up wounds or caring for the sick. It got so bad she finally prevailed on Dad to build a house at S. 2015 Grand so she could get out of the first-aid business.”

Balzer also remembered what must have been Spokane’s earliest open-air movie showings. Between 1905 and 1907, his father would rig up thin bed sheets on wires and project silent movies on them. The sheets were so thin, the crowds could watch the pictures from either side.

In one odd twist, the young Balzer and his pals inadvertently founded one of the park’s biggest attractions.

He and his friends were playing in a southern section of the park when they decided to dig a cave. They dug down seven or eight feet. One day, his father came by and saw that the dirt they had excavated was pure, fertile loam. The elder Balzer held some of that good soil between his fingers and started thinking. Before long, he was scooping out loam by the steam-shovel load and using it elsewhere in Manito and in the other parks in the city.

The land became so scooped out that the succeeding superintendent, John W. Duncan, turned it into a formal garden called the Sunken Garden, which was later renamed the Duncan Garden.

Lee Sahlin’s Manito memories

Lee J. Sahlin, 79, grew up in Manito Park as well. His family lived next to the park from about 1928 to 1940.

“I was in that park every day since I was 3 or 4 until I was in high school,” said Sahlin, an amateur historian and former president of the board of the Cheney Cowles Museum, now the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC). “You can’t imagine what an attractive place that was, in the days before people could drive out to lakes en masse. The playground on a summer day would just be loaded with children. It’s hard to imagine now.”

In those days, upper Manito (the southern neck of the park, bordering 25th Avenue) was packed with long-gone attractions.

“Checkers were played on large wooden boards about 10 feet square,” wrote Sahlin in a reminiscence titled “A Holy Place,” that he composed for his children. “Checkers were wooden, about one foot in diameter. They were moved by long metal poles with a hook at the end to engage the checkers.”

Upper Manito also had the city’s main tennis courts (courts now remain only at “lower” Manito, near the main entrance). The horseshoe courts (several of which still remain) were also very busy. Regional championships were held regularly, and one of the park maintenance men was one of champions.

“He made sure the horseshoe courts were especially well-manicured,” said Sahlin.

Duncan, a native of Scotland, also put in an English-style bowling green in 1913. The Spokesman-Review noted that this game, a kind of lawn-bowling, was “popular with elderly men.”

Sahlin fondly remembers some more mischievous activities, too. He and his pals used to build rafts and float them on the old “elk pond,” so named because it was in the zoo’s elk enclosure (near the present-day Rose Hill parking lot), and catch the goldfish that people had dumped in there.

“Then we put them in the Sunken Garden fountain, which dismayed the parkmen,” wrote Sahlin.

The Olmsted myth

Common knowledge has long held that Manito Park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, the famous firm that designed New York’s Central Park.

Not so, according to Tony Bamonte and Suzanne Schaeffer Bamonte, authors of a hardback history of the park, “Manito Park: A Reflection of Spokane’s Past” from Tornado Creek Publications (a new “Centennial Edition” of the book is now available in area bookstores, and a DVD documentary of the same title is available in bookstores as well).

“The parks department put out a brochure in the 1920s or 1930s which stated that, and it was wrong,” said Tony Bamonte. “This is been such a misconception, we devoted a whole page to it in our book.”

However, the myth is based on a kernel of truth. The Olmsted Brothers were commissioned in 1907 to devise a plan for the city’s park system, including Manito. Their report was issued in 1913 and it included a 1½ page assessment of Manito Park.

Here’s a sample: “The prominent ledges are decidedly valuable as picturesque landscape features. They should be carefully preserved and taken advantage of in designing all kinds of improvements.”

“Their contribution was very slight,” said Bamonte. “They did a page and a half and made a few suggestions, and a few of them were followed. But they didn’t design the park.”

It would be more accurate to say that the park’s plan evolved over the decades.

The Bamontes credit three people with creating the park Spokane came to love: Francis Cook, the man who bought the land with the dream of making it into a park; Charles Balzer (C. Norb Balzer’s father), who presided over the early layout of the park; and John W. Duncan, who took over from Balzer in 1910 and presided until 1942.

By the way, the Olmsted Brothers did make one emphatic recommendation: Get rid of the zoo.

The Manito Zoo

Hard to believe today, but Manito Park’s biggest attraction through 1932 was a zoo with grizzly bears, polar bears, monkeys, elk, deer, cougars, owls and buffalo. It filled a third of the park: Elk grazed on what is now Rose Hill, emus strutted in today’s Japanese Garden and the buffalo once roamed in today’s Lilac Garden.

Nothing remains now except the Park Bench Café, then known as the Peanut Shack, where zoo-goers bought peanuts to feed the monkeys. A visitor today can walk behind the Park Bench to the rock outcrop, and see an old rusted iron ring embedded in the jagged basalt wall. That’s the only remnant of the bear cages.

The zoo began almost by accident, when Balzer found some beavers working in one of Manito’s spring-fed ponds, one of which was right next to the present Park Bench Café. He fenced the beavers off and visitors gathered to gawk. Gradually, the zoo acquired other animals, including grizzlies from Yellowstone National Park, emus from an Australian dealer, and two polar bear cubs from a soldier who brought them back from Army duty in Alaska (his parents got tired of having them in the back yard).

Manito, as the Olmsteds had already noted, was not an ideal place for a zoo. It was too small, too crowded and surrounded by city residents who didn’t necessarily want to hear the snarling of bobcats at night.

“Occasionally, the buffalo would rip through their fence and roam the neighborhood,” wrote Sahlin. “I can remember seeing one near our house.”

The most notorious accident occurred in 1923 when 9-year-old Elizabeth Harris ducked under the guard rail at the polar bear enclosure and began tossing food into the cage. One of the polar bears grabbed Elizabeth’s arm, pulled it inside the bars and tore it off. The little girl survived. She insisted that the bears not be punished, because she said it was her fault.

But the zoo would survive only another nine years. As the Olmsteds had noted in their 1913 report, “a complete zoological show is a very expensive affair, particularly in maintenance.” By 1932, the Great Depression was at its peak. The idea of spending about $3,000 a year to feed the animals seemed an extravagance. In August 1932, the city’s park board voted to shut down the zoo at the end of the year.

But what to do about the animals? The final inventory included 178 animals. Park officials gave away as many critters as they could, but when the deadline approached on New Year’s Eve, shots rang out. A game warden shot a polar bear, two grizzlies and three buffalo. They were stuffed and displayed at the Cheney Cowles Museum (now the MAC).

From that point on, the emphasis shifted toward the gardens, which remains the park’s glory to this day.

Duncan Garden

We’ve already heard about how the Sunken Garden became sunken.

But the true advance came around 1912 when Duncan cast his eye over that three-acre expanse and envisioned a classic European Renaissance garden.

“The higher elevation of the rocky ground where the greenhouses are located gave a fine opportunity to lay out below a formal garden, blending into the natural surroundings beyond,” wrote Duncan.

It didn’t take long for the gardens to become a horticultural attraction with a national reputation.

“I do not suppose there is a single thing in our city that been taken in as many snap shots as the sunken gardens,” wrote Aubrey L. White, former park board president, in 1928. “… Nearly every hour during the fine days of summer, some auto-load of visitors will be shown the garden and even the sightseeing bus will stop long enough for the passengers so inclined to alight and get a picture. Its advertising value, therefore, figures along with the Davenport Hotel.”

When Duncan retired in 1942, the Sunken Garden was renamed the Duncan Garden in his honor.

The garden has undergone a number of changes over the decades, including the addition in 1956 of the Davenport Fountain as the central focal point. The fountain, made of Mount Airy granite from North Carolina, was donated in memory of Louis M. Davenport (of the aforementioned Davenport Hotel) by his widow.

The planting beds have been vastly expanded in the last few years to create even larger splashes of color, and the Friends of Manito this spring donated an elegant new gazebo as a focal point for the garden’s far southern end.

“Every trick of the trade is employed in Duncan Garden — how you space the plants and how you make it look fully planted from every direction,” said Taylor Bressler, Spokane’s parks operation division manager.

The Duncan Garden remains essentially what Duncan envisioned at the beginning: a nationally known work of horticultural art.

The Duck Pond

Back in the Montrose Park days, it was called the Mirror Pond and was three times larger than it is today. It extended all the way across the present picnic grounds to Grand Boulevard.

Music and laughter rang out from a dance pavilion on its banks. Couples cruised the waters in rented canoes.

Yet because parts of it were more mud-flat than pond, especially in the summer, it has been considerably re-shaped and contained into its present, relatively compact spot.

In any configuration, it has always been the most popular spot among small children of the frog- and turtle-loving variety.

“In summers, we played pirates on an island which existed on the south edge of the pond,” said Sahlin. “It has since been removed and the children probably contributed to its erosion by constant use.”

He also remembers learning to play ice hockey there in winters and fishing in the summers. Fishing was banned in 1961 (too many ducks were getting hooked), although the ban was lifted for the occasional fishing derby.

Today, the pond is best known for its flocks of ducks and its majestic swans — hearkening back to the days when the Manito Zoo sported an octagonal Swan House.

The Nishinomiya Japanese Garden

As early as 1928, Duncan was publicly saying that what Manito Park needed most was a Japanese garden — one “with that fine Japanese effect of Fuji-yama (Mt. Spokane) in the distance.”

Yet it wasn’t until 1962 that a plan was approved to create a garden symbolic of the friendship between Japan and its sister city of Nishinomiya. And it wasn’t until 1974, during Expo ‘74, that the garden was finally dedicated.

The original designer was Nagao Sakurai of the Imperial Palace Gardens of Kyoto, who envisioned every rock, every waterfall and every line in the curving paths. He suffered a stroke not long after construction began, but was able to continue the work from his wheelchair. His son, Ken Sakurai, eventually finished the pond, where the giant koi cruise today.

A new cedar fence was built last year and a new wheelchair-accessible entrance is under construction. A vending machine for koi food is also planned.Yet the fish have little to do with the garden’s true appeal: its feeling of peace, harmony and tranquility.

Rose Hill

The elk are long gone in this glorious section of park. Rose Hill began in the 1940s as a joint venture between the Spokane Rose Society and Spokane Parks and Recreation.

The idea was to have “most of the roses which can be satisfactorily grown in this climate,” according to the original plan.

Today, this four-acre plot has 1,500 rose bushes representing more than 150 varieties, as well as a section devoted to old-fashioned roses. The layout still conforms to the original 1940s plan: a classic concentric design with an arbor on the north end and a new arbor on the south end, donated by the Friends of Manito.

Bressler said he’s seen a lot of rose gardens, and Rose Hill is “bar none the best I’ve ever seen.” There’s some outside confirmation of that: For 14 consecutive years, Rose Hill has won the American Rose Society’s award for excellence in maintenance, according to Steve Gustafson, Manito’s horticulture supervisor. Rose Hill is an official All-America Rose Selections display garden and serves as a kind of test garden for determining which varieties are hardy in Spokane’s climate.

By the way, Rose Hill and Duncan Garden are the two most popular sites in the park for weddings. Records have been kept only since 1979, but since then, 2,191 weddings have been performed in Manito.

Manito’s other flowery delights

Manito’s floral theme is also clear in two gardens to the east and west of Rose Hill.

The Joel E. Ferris Perennial Garden is a gently sloping riot of color, with more than 300 perennials, which has evolved in that spot since nearly the demise of the zoo.

The common names alone are a kind of Shakespearean poetry: Bigelow sneezeweed, bloody cranesbill, evergreen candytuft, moonshine yarrow and tall bearded iris.

“That garden is appreciated by those who are really gardeners, people who can appreciate the slow dynamics of our garden,” said Bressler. “We’ll demonstrate the hellebores in February all the way through the mums in the fall. It’s a popular walk even in the winter.”

The Lilac Garden is a long, perfume-scented glade full of dozens of examples of Spokane’s official flower. Gustafson said the bloom is at its height in mid-May — meaning, right now.

Many of the plants in Manito come from the park’s own Gaiser Conservatory greenhouses. Greenhouses occupied the site since 1912, but the present ones were built in 1974 and have been extensively renovated since. The main part of Gaiser Conservatory is open to the public and serves as a kind of tropical indoor botanical garden, as well as the place where the seeds of the park’s beauty are planted.

“A lot of cities have completely gotten away from growing anything,” said Bressler. “But we still produce the plants and it’s a chance for citizens to see them growing.”

Manito’s terrain is full of ledges and drop-offs and over the decades the park itself has had its share of peaks and valleys. Sometimes its problems were of the natural variety — droughts, frosts and ice-storms. Other times, the problems were of the human variety.

A group of Manito-area residents presented a petition to the Spokane City Council in 1969 protesting nightly gatherings of young people who were accused of “filthy language, drug-passing and destroying the ducks.”

Maintenance budgets have gone up and down. Yet Manito acquired a potent group of benefactors in 1990, the Friends of Manito, a citizens group that is now over 1,000 members strong. With a little help from its Friends, Manito’s gardens are in many ways more spectacular than ever. The Duncan Gardens recently tripled its bedding space, and the Perennial Garden quadrupled its bedding space in 1996.

In other words, there is still no better place in the Inland Northwest to stop and take a whiff of the genus rosa, the lilacs or even the Bigelow sneezeweed.

And if you sneak just west of Rose Hill into the rocky, untamed parts of the park, you can still catch a whiff of the aroma that attracted an earlier generation to this “holy place” on Spokane’s South Hill — the wild roses of Montrose Park.