Spokane (spo-KAN) is the booming center of the vast, rich "Inland Northwest," an area that includes eastern Washington, northern Idaho, northeastern Oregon, western Montana, and southern British Columbia. A large rail center, the Spokane area also produces wheat, apples, hops, silver, gold, zinc, and lead. Thanks to the surrounding mountain ranges, Spokane enjoys what it likes to term New Mexico's climate in the winter and Maine's in the summer. The city itself is in a saucerlike setting amid pine-green hills, with the Spokane River running through its 52 square miles.

Long a favorite Native American hunting and fishing ground, Spokane began as a sawmill, powered by Spokane Falls. This village, the name meaning "children of the sun," was the only point in a 400-mile-long north-south range of mountains where railroads could cross the Rockies and reach the Columbia Basin. Railroading sparked the city's early growth. The Coeur d'Alene gold fields in Idaho helped finance Spokane's continuing development and helped it survive an 1889 fire that nearly leveled the city. Farming, lumbering, mining, and railroading aided Spokane's growth during the first decade of the century.

In 1974, the Havermale and Cannon islands in the Spokane River were the site of EXPO 74. The area has since been developed as Riverfront Park.