228 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The Spokane Hotel 



OFFICIAL HEADQUARTERS SEVENTEENTH NATIONAL 

 IRRIGATION CONGRESS. 



The Spokane was originally built in 1890 at the 

 time of the big fire. It was purchased by the present 

 owners in 1900, and entirely remodeled, since which 

 time adjacent ground has been acquired and many addi- 

 tional rooms added. 



The Spokane today is the largest hotel in the 

 Northwest. It embraces a block of ground 200x150, 

 with a building six stories in height, exclusively devoted 

 to hotel uses. The plant contains 4^ acres of floor 

 space, one acre of which is devoted to the cafes, and the 

 creature comfort of the guests. 



In all there are 300 guest chambers in the house, 

 125 of which have private baths. The rooms devoted to 

 the display of the traveling man's goods, are especially 

 equipped for their business, many of them containing 

 500 square feet of space, and accommodating very large 

 lines. All sample rooms are equipped with arc lights, 

 running water is in all rooms, so is the telephone. 



The lobby faces First avenue, and occupies 4,000 

 square feet. It is the rendezvous of the city, and glis- 

 tens with its life and bustle. The parlors on the second 

 floor can accommodate 700 people at a reception. Opening 

 off from the lobby is the Moorish room where 5 o'clock 

 tea is served in the afternoon. This room is an office 

 floor, ladies' parlor, and in the evening is tised for a 

 special banquet hall, accommodating 200 guests. Ad- 

 joining this room is the Hunters' dining hall, seating 

 75 people typical of the chase with its superb collec- 

 tion of animal- heads and its chandeliers and wall fix- 

 tures fashioned from elk and deer horns, based with 

 hammered copper shields and trimmings. 



But the crowning feature of the house known as 

 it is as the land mark of comfort in the west is the 

 silver grill. The old Manor Inn room of England where 

 comfort is written on its walls, and good living appears 

 everywhere. This room is unique. Its praises have been 

 sung everywhere, and it has been copied or attempted 

 in many places, but in no copy are the conditions of 

 light and surroundings quite right. The room itself is 

 restful. Its dark brick walls and brick floors, relieved 

 with insertion of Mouravian tiles, the quaint design of 

 the four season frieze above the hand-hewn shelf the 

 work of a great artist the low ceilings with their beam 

 network, all hand hewn, working out to the vast dome 

 through which streams the rays of the morning sun, the 

 fountain and rockery of basaltic rock with its wealth of 

 ferns, the singing canaries part of this room and 

 then the crowning glory of the great inglenook occupy- 

 ing one end of the room, make a picture blending real 

 art with solid comfort that lives forever in man's 

 memory. 



And this fireplace. You walk into it, and around 

 it. and the great logs are burning, and you sit on the 

 settees on each side. Here before the blaze of the hard 

 wood fire, the great barons of beef, or the chestnut-fed 

 turkey are roasted on the old English spits for the delec- 

 tation of the guest. Inscribed above the fireplace are 

 Owen Meredith's beautiful lines: 



"He may live without books, what is knowledge but 



grieving, 



He may live without hope, what is hope but deceiving, 

 He may live without love, what is passion but pining, 

 But where is the man that can live without dining?" 



And when the beef or turkey is roasted, it is trundled on 

 the solid silver traveling carver the creation of Chris- 

 tofle of Paris around to the waiting guests, the delic- 

 ious appeaser of the gourmand's appetite. 



Off from the grill room is a ladies' room, breakfast 

 room, and private dining quarters, and a quaint ladies' 

 reception room, all harmonizing in their decorations 

 with the artistic finish of this attractive touch of old 

 world life in our modern surroundings. 



It would be idle to see this great dining depart- 

 ment of a Western hotel, without also taking a trip 

 through the cellars of the silver grill. Here the con- 

 noisseur of wines lives, and has a being, and it is only 

 truth to say that no wine cellar on the coast excels it, 

 in the holding of vintage wines. 



AMERICAN FALLS, IDAHO. 



One of the best towns in southern Idaho, a town hav- 

 ing unusual natural resources and advantages, is American 

 Falls. Idaho, generally referred to as "the Spokane of 

 Idaho," owing to its great water power, which is twenty 

 thousand horse power greater than that of Spokane Falls. 



Two years ago American Falls, which is located in 

 the heart of the great Snake river valley, was little more 

 than a railway station, where the great steel railroad 

 bridge of the Oregon Short Line spans the turbulent 

 waters of the Snake river above the falls. At that time 

 the vast acres of rich soil surrounding the town were 

 utilized as grazing ground for cattle and sheep. But sud- 

 denly and unexpectedly a great transformation was effected 

 through the magic wand of water. The American Falls Canal 

 Company, composed of progressive men of brains and 

 foresight, built the American Falls canal, sixty-five miles 

 in length, placing more than 120,000 acres of land under 

 irrigation, a majority of which is directly tributary to 

 American Falls. Then came the homeseekers for govern- 

 ment land and filed locations upon thousands and thou- 

 sands of acres in every direction from the town, which are 

 now being placed under cultivation. 



American Falls, the heart of this vast rich territory, 

 soon felt the pulsations of progress and began showing 

 life and growth, not with a "boom," but as a natural 

 result of the demands of the surrounding developments, 

 until today the town has three large general stores, two 

 banks, a $30,000 hotel, modern in every respect, and an- 

 other 50-room hotel now building to meet the demands, a 

 $20,000 auditorium and opera house, three lumber yards, 

 several large implement concerns, a large flour mill, two 

 newspapers and other manufacturing concerns, also scores 

 of business houses and hundreds of beautiful homes. Shade 

 trees by the hundreds line the streets and cement side- 

 walks, and the city waterworks is a modern plant in every 

 respect, supplied with water which is unexcelled. A vol- 

 ume could be written in favor of the wonderful springs 

 which supply the city water. Like liquid crystal it bubbles 

 out of the earth, 4,300 gallons a minute in volume, abso- 

 lutely pure and devoid of any mineral substance or other 

 impurities. 



From the stock yards here located many trains of 

 cattle and sheep are annually shipped to the eastern mar- 

 kets, and more than 80,000 sheep are sheared every year 

 at the electric shearing plant located at this point. 



Such in brief is the history of a western town which has 

 sprung up like a mushroom and whose future is safe. 

 Located on the main line of a great transcontinental rail- 

 way system, having one of the greatest water powers in 

 the Northwest, in the very heart of a rich agricultural, 

 cattle' and sheep country, with unbounded natural re- 

 sources and distributing facilities, American Falls is des- 

 tined to become one of the great manufacturing and dis- 

 tributing centers of the great Northwest. 



