Lake Roosevelt Administrative History

Building Foundations at Fort Spokane

The 1961 Historic Structures Report for Fort Spokane mentioned that archaeological testing was needed to determine the exact number of building foundations still existing and to locate the earlier buildings in order to protect them. Archaeological investigations at the site began in 1963, the first at LARO in the relatively new field of historical archaeology. This initial work concentrated on foundations. LARO personnel had worked that spring to clear debris, brush, and old fences from the fort grounds and in the process located a number of old foundations not previously documented. Much of this work was done by maintenance worker Don Everts, who "witched" the water lines leading to the foundations. WSU Archaeologist John Combes brought in a crew of students late that summer to work on locating building remains from the earliest period, 1880-1882, when the fort was still known as Camp Spokane. When this work was finished, the crew turned its attention to the main fort, where they dug within the foundation of a large building that once had contained several shops. Through their excavations and subsequent artifact analyses, they were able to delineate the areas used by the blacksmith, wheelwright, tinner, carpenter, and painter. [48]

LARO finished its initial program of stabilizing and restoring foundations at Fort Spokane in 1972. The following year, the recreation area began to locate and identify additional historic foundation stones to reduce inadvertent damage by LARO staff (some had been repeatedly plowed over). As of 1975, about thirty-one foundations and ten building depressions were deteriorating due to weather, vegetative growth, and rodent activity. Many of these were enumerated in LARO's List of Classified Structures, but a number were rapidly deteriorating because very little maintenance or protection was done on the foundations until the early 1980s. In 1981, however, the Park Service approved a project to stabilize and preserve sixteen granite foundations and two brick-lined root cellars. The University of Idaho contracted in 1985 to excavate the Company G root cellar. Following the excavations, the masonry walls were stabilized and the hole was filled with sterile sand. Foundations at two additional sites were restored in 1994-1995. [49]

Excavation of root cellar at Fort Spokane, May 1985. Photo courtesy of National Park Service, Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area (LARO 2950).

In 1991, cultural resources staff of the Park Service regional office in Seattle prepared a comprehensive design plan for Fort Spokane. One element of the plan was treatment of the foundations. The report recommended protecting and delineating archaeological features. To enhance the visitor's understanding of the historic scene, the authors proposed a variety of treatments of individual foundations, including outlining, raised walls, platforms (with floor plans painted on the surface), and "ghosted" frames. Park Service thinking had come a long way from 1968, when LARO's Master Plan called for examining the possibility of reconstructing certain Fort Spokane buildings to serve as an overnight lodge, restaurant, or gift shop run by a concessionaire. As an appendix in the report, Regional Archaeologist Jim Thomson commented that because of funding limitations, foundations should be identified and stabilized, but archaeological testing and "ghosts" were too costly to be considered. [50]

Excavations at the Fort Spokane Dump

The historic dumping areas at Fort Spokane have attracted pot hunters for years, challenging LARO's ability to protect these sites. The main dump was discovered inadvertently in 1967 while bulldozing in the area. Trash included bottles, mugs, and buttons. The district ranger planned to monitor the area closely to prevent vandalism, but the site was regularly looted. Still, LARO staff tried to maintain a semblance of control by contacting violators to ensure future cooperation. When pot hunting continued, LARO Park Naturalist Arthur Hathaway asked Regional Archeologist Charles Bohannon to excavate the main military dump. Bohannon denied the request, adding that LARO was responsible for site protection. A major illegal excavation in the spring of 1973 encouraged the park to look into having an archaeologist investigate the site in the belief that professional excavation would discourage pot hunting by removing the attraction. LARO staff wrote a Resource Study Proposal to hire University of Idaho archaeologist Roderick Sprague to work at the site, but funding was not available. The park continued with its monitoring program, adding other areas on the grounds where smaller dumps were found. Looters continued their activities also, and there were at least seven reported incidents from 1988-1998. One of these, in January 1994, resulted in disturbance of an area as large as forty-eight square meters, with excavations going deep enough to destroy nearly twenty cubic meters of the dump; no arrests were made in this case. Four years later, the Park Service finally hired an archaeologist to inventory and analyze the artifact concentrations in the main dump. [51]

St. Paul's Mission

St. Paul's Mission presented different issues for the Park Service since it was not added to LARO until 1974. The building, constructed in 1847 using traditional post-and-sill design, fell into disuse after 1873 and partially burned in 1910, the same day that the old buildings at Fort Colvile caught fire. The damaged structure deteriorated further for nearly three decades until regional Catholics joined with a local service club and many individuals to fund a major restoration project in 1939-1940. Father Paul M. Goergen, who oversaw the work, noted that all the workers on the project had come to appreciate the skill and hard work of the original builders. "Even we, who have modern equipment to work with, find restoration of the mission difficult and exhausting work," he admitted. The Catholic Diocese of Spokane deeded the church property to the State of Washington in 1951, and the state turned administration of the site over to the Park Service in 1974. [52]

Cultural Landscapes

Obviously, not all historic sites at LARO received the intensive protection and interpretation given to Fort Spokane and St. Paul's Mission. Nonetheless, the Park Service had a mandate to conserve not only the natural environment but also the "historic objects" within it. Park managers often had difficulty deciding how to manage old buildings, and the ambivalent attitudes of certain early LARO superintendents toward the historic structures at Fort Spokane probably were typical of the era.

To help provide guidance, the Park Service initiated a pilot program in 1979 to assess cultural landscapes that included not just buildings and structures but the surrounding areas as well. This method of analyzing properties gained acceptance during the 1980s, and the Park Service now funds cultural landscape work as a distinct resource type. Landscape architects with the cultural resources division in the regional office in Seattle conducted a preliminary landscape study of Fort Spokane in 1984, followed by a cultural landscape report (CLR) and design proposal. The regional staff then continued to work closely with LARO personnel to consolidate the findings from the Fort Spokane CLR, completing a draft Comprehensive Plan for the site in 1991. Although the plan was never finalized, it addressed many of the issues raised in the earlier CLR. LARO staff at Fort Spokane used this plan as the basis for a series of projects to enhance the interpretative environment at the site. These included stabilizing foundations and ruins, designing the entry gate, building an interpretive trail, working in the historic orchard, and modifying the access road and parking area. Natural resource management at LARO also considered cultural landscape issues when managing for hazard trees, insect infestations, and fires. [53]

The Park Service instituted a service-wide Cultural Landscape Inventory to document and evaluate any park landscape that was potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Work on this inventory at LARO began in 1994 when two landscape architects from the regional office worked during the spring and summer to identify and inventory nineteen potential cultural landscapes at LARO; they identified fifteen others for additional work the following year. The sites ranged from Grand Coulee Dam, with its associated irrigation features and towns, to isolated homestead cabins and farms, to Fort Spokane. The work in 1994 was funded by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) as part of a multi-disciplinary inventory that was incorporated into the research design of a much larger project, described later in this chapter. The inventory work is not yet completed. [54]