100 years ago in Spokane: Funeral marks ‘first public appearance’ of KKK in Spokane, newspaper says

Six hooded figures conducted a full-fledged Ku Klux Klan funeral at the Fairmont Cemetery.

The deceased was Frank Bowers, who died of pneumonia.

About 100 other mourners (nonhooded) looked on in complete silence while the Klansmen marched across the cemetery and laid a cross, covered with red flowers, against the casket niche. Then the Klansmen marched out of sight into the trees.

It was the “first public appearance of the Klan in Spokane,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle.

From the Halloween beat: Spokane had another rowdy Halloween night, and two young Lidgerwood pranksters committed much of the mayhem.

They attached a logging chain to the rear of their auto and then they wrapped the chain around fences and outbuildings and dragged them “a few blocks.” They “rearranged the landscape to suit themselves,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle.

Spokane’s streetcars were put in jeopardy by other Halloween tricksters. A “heavy sod roller” was stolen from Manito Park and placed on the Grand Avenue streetcar tracks. It was removed before any vehicles struck it.

Getting streetcars to stop at all was a challenge on other tracks. Pranksters soaped or greased a number of tracks, which caused the streetcars to slide “for a few blocks” after the brakes were applied.

The strangest prank? Someone dragged a dilapidated airplane out onto a sidewalk. They apparently stole it from the Watt Brothers garage.