Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

What did people do for fun on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Spokane in 1915?

They went to the theater.

A total of 56,000 attended the city’s stage shows, vaudeville performances and movie theaters, breaking a record for a two-day stretch.

The big attractions included Andrew Mack, an Irish tenor, and a local production of a George M. Cohan show titled “Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.” 

Also popular were two movies: a Charlie Chaplin-Marie Dressler film called “Tillie’s Punctured Romance” and a documentary titled “The Exposure of the White Slave Traffic.”

From the park beat: Spokane’s Park Board approved a plan to dam Hangman Creek at High Bridge Park to “afford skating in the winter and boating in the summer.”

The proposed dam would be 7 feet high, 200 feet wide and would back up the creek 1,400 feet.

The board said this was just the first of three dams it hoped to build in High Bridge Park, eventually converting the creek into “a succession of small lakes, each on different levels.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1893: The U.S. Postal Service issued its first commemorative stamp to honor the World’s Columbian Expedition and the quadricentennial of Christopher Columbus’ voyage.