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    Cheney
    Cheney
    Cheney
    Ebook191 pages1 hour

    Cheney

    By Joan Mamanakis and Southwest Spokane County Historical Society

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    About this ebook

    Established as a railroad section station on the Northern Pacific Railroad, Cheney boomed into existence as the Spokane County seat in 1880. The City of Cheney incorporated in 1883, and though its role as county seat was short-lived, Cheney long served as an agricultural and mercantile hub for the surrounding Palouse and scabland towns and farms. The rotary rod weeder was invented here and manufactured by the Cheney Weeder Company to be shipped all over the country and the world. The most enduring legacy of the pioneers was Eastern Washington University, beginning as the Benjamin P. Cheney Academy in 1882 with a donation from the town's namesake. In 1891, it became Washington's first normal school for the training of teachers. Growing and diversifying, the university now has a student body of over 10,000.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 24, 2015
    ISBN9781439652978
    Cheney
    Author

    Joan Mamanakis

    Joan Mamanakis grew up in Cheney. Upon returning to her hometown, she discovered her passion for researching and sharing its history. Joan served as the codirector of the Southwest Spokane County Historical Society, which operates the Cheney Historical Museum. Images in this book come from the museum collection and Eastern Washington University Special Collections, among other sources.

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      Book preview

      Cheney - Joan Mamanakis

      INTRODUCTION

      A spring bubbled up from the ground, feeding a year-round pond where Native Americans had a winter camp at the base of a group of hills in Section 13. It was the highest point on the surveyed route for the transcontinental Northern Pacific Railway line between the Idaho border and the Columbia River crossing near modern-day Tri-Cities. This was a natural place for the railroad to build a section station.

      A handful of homesteaders were in the area, including Thomas Philleo, who arrived in 1869 with a stock of horses and cattle to locate near the lake that bears his name. Civil War veteran Daniel F. Percival homesteaded land along Rock Creek in 1872. George W. Cook settled to the north, where his wife and daughter joined him in the autumn of 1878. The Cooks’ elder daughter, Sarah Jane, soon arrived with her husband, Samuel Showalter, to homestead land to the west.

      These settlers knew the railroad was coming, so they set to work building the enterprises the new community would need. Charles Carreau built a log structure that he dubbed the St. Charles Hotel. Stephen Harris set up the first blacksmith shop. By the end of 1878, the settlers had established the first school on a hill in a log building, with Mary Cook walking over from her father’s homestead to teach 15 students. Foreseeing the demand for supplies by the railroad and pioneers, Isaac Ballinger entered into the freight business, making month-long trips to Walla Walla while his wife took care of their infant alone in the sparsely populated country.

      In 1880, Gen. John W. Sprague, a superintendent for the Northern Pacific Railway, named the town site on Section 13 Cheney, though it was formerly known as Billings, Big Springs, and Depot Springs. Naming towns after railroad company officers was a common practice of the period, and Boston businessman Benjamin Pierce Cheney was a major stockholder and a director of the company. When the first plat of Cheney was laid out in 1880, the streets ran parallel to the rail line rather than the compass. This gave the town its oddly angled streets and pie shape of today. In November 1880, Cheney became the Spokane County seat in a hotly disputed election. The town that had started the year with a population numbering in the tens ended the year with several hundred residents and the county government.

      Cheney was also at the center of the temperance movement in the Pacific Northwest with the arrival of Lucy Robbins Switzer in 1880. Switzer traveled throughout Washington Territory establishing temperance unions. She had a regular column in the newspaper and the temperance journal, and was a featured speaker at several regional and national temperance conventions. She was also a strong advocate for women’s suffrage and lived to see Washington women win the right to vote in 1910.

      In 1881, the businessmen of Cheney embarked on their most enduring project for the town, establishing an educational institution. They wrote to Benjamin Cheney asking for his assistance, and he gave $10,000, persuaded the railroad to give over eight acres of land, and sent a pair of teachers to start the Benjamin P. Cheney Academy, which opened April 3, 1882.

      Cheney incorporated as a city in 1883, the same year that Benjamin Pierce Cheney and his wife, Elizabeth, made their only visit to the town and academy. The couple, along with other dignitaries on the inaugural trip of the Northern Pacific transcontinental line, stopped for a few hours on September 18, 1883. The citizens put on a celebration with food, song, a parade, and many speeches to honor their benefactor.

      Spokane won back the county seat in 1886, and Cheney then pinned its dreams on agriculture and education. The Benjamin P. Cheney Academy became Washington’s first state Normal School on March 22, 1890. Those early years of the school were rocky. Twice it burned to the ground, and three times Washington governors vetoed funding for the school. Each time though, citizens, teachers, and students fought back, keeping the school going and overcoming government skeptics.

      The Cheney School District set up its own school in 1887 with William J. Sutton as its principal. Sutton, a charismatic speaker and teacher, went on to head the Normal School and was one of its most passionate advocates. As a state senator, he served on the education committee, helping to build a robust educational system for Washington. Through consolidation, the Cheney public school district grew to be one of the largest geographic districts in the state.

      Cheney endured early trials as major fires nearly swept the town away in 1883, 1889, and 1890. It has been home to many kinds of business; a few have endured, but most have vanished. It was home to one of the earliest breweries, as well as a number of creameries processing and selling milk and cheese. Fred Reuter opened the Cheney Cheese Factory just south of town in 1903. At the turn of the 20th century, one-third of the cheese made in Washington came from Cheney creameries. The rotary rod weeder, a farm tillage implement, was invented by local men Kyle and Cleve Wolfe. The Cheney Weeder Company manufactured and shipped weeders all over the country and beyond from 1912 to 1953.

      Lumber mills provided materials for building the business district and homes, as well as wagons, furniture, and the furniture makers’ second business of supplying coffins and grave markers. In the early 1900s, there were eight sawmills within a 10-mile radius of Cheney.

      The farmers in the district also needed gristmills to grind their wheat into flour. The first flour mill opened in 1880. The longest operating business in Cheney is its current flour mill, opened in 1907 by Frank M. Martin and now operated by Archer Daniels Midland.

      Cheney’s most prominent native son, Clarence D. Martin, graduated from the Cheney Normal School in 1903. He became Washington’s first native-born governor in 1933. Among his many accomplishments as governor, Martin was instrumental in securing the Grand Coulee Dam project, which was one of the most successful jobs projects of the Great Depression and for the state industry and agriculture.

      Into the 1960s, Cheney straddled the main east-west highway of the state and hosted a thriving business district. At one time, there were 13 gas stations, a movie theater, three motels, two

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