Spokane Falls
SHORT STORY
SEASON 2 · JUNE 2026
Photography and story by John Menzies
The City That Dropped “Falls”
The city of Spokane used to be called Spokane Falls.
They dropped “Falls” in 1891—ironically, one year after the falls took on new importance for the growing city.
The falls are basalt. Ancient lava flows defined the river's path here roughly 15 million years ago. Then the Ice Age came, and with it, floods — glacial Lake Missoula, over in Montana, repeatedly draining toward the Pacific and carving the channels the Spokane River still runs through today. What looks like a pretty waterfall in a city park is actually the bottom of an ancient flood path.
The Spokane people knew this place as Stluputqu. Swift water.
They'd been fishing salmon here for thousands of years before anyone thought to dam it.
In 1889, a group of Spokane businessmen looked at the lower falls and saw something else. Electricity. They created the Washington Water Power Company in March of that year. In August, a fire burned 32 city blocks to the ground.
On November 12, 1890, the Monroe Street hydroelectric plant began generating electricity for a city still rebuilding from the fire.
The dam was an 18-foot structure of rock and timber. Two giant penstocks — pressurized pipes — carried water downhill from the dam to turbines in the powerhouse below the bridge. The turbines drove the generators.
Hydroelectric power has been generated at the Monroe Street site ever since.
The Upper Falls Power Plant, viewed from Post Street Bridge, stands upstream from the Monroe Street development.
The red-brick Post Street Substation still stands on the south bank, its Washington Water Power name facing the falls. The original powerhouse is gone. One of its turbine-generator units, installed in 1903, operated until 1990 before being sent to The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1992, Washington Water Power replaced the old plant with an underground powerhouse beneath Huntington Park.
None of this was on any sign I saw. I had to go looking for it.
Upper Spokane Falls flow beneath the Howard Street Bridge.
You can stand at the railing, watch the water go over the falls, and never know that a working hydroelectric plant is beneath your feet.
The city dropped “Falls” from its name. But the falls never stopped.
And that is the story behind the place.
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