Spokane House was established in 1810 by the North West Company, a British-Canadian fur trading company, with the express purpose of trading for furs with the natives. The post and the rivers of the same name are namesakes of the
Spokan, the people indigenous to the region. The site chosen was at the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers. There were several reasons for this choice of site, to whit:
• The Little Spokane was an excellent beaver river
• A large expanse of flat land useful for farming and grazing
• The Spokane River provided a plentiful supply of salmon
• This was the headquarters of the central branch of the Spokan Tribe
• The area provided a supply of timber and game animals
The post was operated by the North West Company until 1821 when the company was absorbed by the Canadian
Hudson's Bay Company. Chartered in May of 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company, today referred to simply as "
The Bay", is the oldest continuously operating company in North America.
This post continued to operate until 1825. The post was 90 miles from the Columbia River, the Company's major trade route, and by the 1820s the local beaver supply was exhausted. As a result, in 1825, the Company moved this post to
Kettle Falls, renaming it
Fort Colvile, after Andrew Colvile, a London governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Of the original post, all that remains is this monument to mark its former location and a State Park, Riverside Park. Annual passes are available for $30 and a one-day pass costs $10.
At [the time this fort was built], all the other merchandise in trade, including horses and guns, was valued in terms of beaver pelts. Prices on an 1824 list from Spokane House ranged from "Scissors" for "½ beaver," to "American rifles" for "30 beaver" (Becher, 39). British guns went for 18 beaver, while "One good horse" cost two pelts. In turn, beaver skins sold in London for two to eight dollars a pound, or in China for four dollars a pelt.
From History Link
Below is the entry for Riverside State Park in Washington: a guide to the Evergreen State.
NINE-MILE DAM, 10.7 m., is one of the power developments of Spokane River. Across the bridge, at 11.2 m., the road swings left to the
SITE OF SPOKANE HOUSE, 13.2 m., the earliest post of the North West Fur Company in Washington. Spokane House, established in 1810 under orders from David Thompson, the surveyor, for nearly 16 years bartered for the furs of the wilderness. In 1821 the North West Company united with the Hudson's Bay Company, and in 1826 the business of the post was transferred to Fort Colvile (see Tour 5). A journal of March 21, 1826, states: “The blacksmith and cook, the only two men we have now here, employed collecting all the iron about the place, stripping the hinges off the doors. . . .”
From Washington: a guide to the Evergreen State Page 309