100 years ago in Spokane: Star athlete’s wedding delayed by quarantine

Delbert Kienholz was standing at the train depot waiting for his fiancé, Florence Fancher, to arrive from San Francisco. Kienholz, a well-known Spokane football and baseball star, had made plans to whisk her to the courthouse to secure a marriage license. The preacher was hired and the wedding bells “were all tuned” for a wedding the next day.

But Kienholz was still standing on the train platform when a messenger arrived with a telegram from Miss Fancher. Upon her arrival in Seattle, a city health officer met her at the train and rushed her to a hospital.

She was put under quarantine for measles, for at least two weeks.

“The story has a happy ending, though,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle, “for the popular young couple have moved the wedding date forward to Christmas.”

From the gold mine beat: For 30 years, the legend had been passed around of a fabulous ledge of pure gold, 6 feet wide, in the Salmon River area of Idaho. It supposedly had been discovered by two old Spokane prospectors. But one of them was killed – probably murdered – and the other died soon afterward, but not before he drew a map to this glittering lode.

He gave it to a Spokane friend, who spent every summer for years in the Idaho mountains trying to find it. He never did.

But now, word came that two men identified only as the Jensen brothers had found it by accident. They described the ledge as “studded with gold so rich that it can be seen with the naked eye.” They claimed they even found the picks and shovels left there by the old prospectors.

The Jensen brothers filed on the claim, but they were snowed in.

“If a small part of the story proves to be true, a stampede to the district is expected when the snow goes off next spring,” said the Chronicle.