Then and Now: Ice skating at Wandermere

In the early 20th century, many businesses would try to attract skaters to frozen ponds around Spokane with convenient parking, snack bars, music played over loudspeakers, warming huts and lights for night skating.

One of those frozen ponds was Wandermere Lake, which had been used for ice skating since the 1920s.

Some of Spokane’s wealthiest pioneers built homes and farms in the Wandermere area as a refuge from city life. These included businessman Jay P. Graves, hotel owner Louis Davenport, inventor Byron Riblet and the members of the Spokane Country Club.

Francis H. Cook, a newspaper man and real estate developer, bought the future Wandermere land from the Northern Pacific railway in the 1880s with the plan to improve the tiny lake there. Cook’s holdings were wiped out in the financial panic of 1893 and he made some improvements at the pond, but his focus was drawn to building a road to the top of Mount Spokane. He died in 1920.

When Robert C. Ross and partner A.L. Doran purchased the land in 1930 to build the golf course, they also continued improvements for ice skaters and hockey teams and even held ski jump competitions on the nearby hillside. The course clubhouse would become a popular night spot with dinners and dancing.

Ross moved to Spokane after early success in real estate in Montana and Salt Lake City, where he watched a park-like resort called Wandamere take shape.

After arriving here in 1919, Ross jumped into buying and selling real estate again but waited for the chance to create the resort that he would call Wandermere.

Ross, who bought out Doran in 1933, built a nine-hole golf course then expanded it to 18 holes in the 1940s. The course has now been run by four generations of the Ross family.

Ross died in 1935 at the age of 54 years old, but his wife Mary Jane and their two sons carried on.

Indoor ice skating, with more reliable ice conditions, became the norm, though ice skating at Wandermere continued into the 1970s, according to author Ty Brown, a great-grandson of Ross, who wrote the 2019 book “Wandermere: Legacy on the Little Spokane River.”