About Hillyard:
Hillyard, Washington was a town in
Spokane County, Washington which existed as a separate town between
1892 and 1924.
The town came about due to the Great Northern Railway and was named
for James J. Hill, then-head of the railroad. Between 1904 and
1912, many of the town's houses were built, to house railroad
workers working in the local yard. Hillyard was the home of the
Great Northern's famed shops where locomotives were manufactured,
repaired, and refurbished. At the time, the Hillyard shop was the
largest in the nation.
In 1924, Hillyard was officially annexed by neighboring
Spokane.
Due to its historical roots as a town housing railroad workers,
Hillyard acquired a rather rough reputation, which lasted well into
recent decades. (As recently as 1979, Daniel Leen described the
Hillyard train yards in his book The Freighthoppers Manual for
North America as having "the feel of warmed-over death.") After the
Great Northern underwent a series of mergers, becoming the
Burlington Northern Railroad and eventually the BNSF Railway, the
Hillyard yard and shops were closed in the early 1980s with BN's
main yard operations in Spokane moving to Yardley. Only the
decaying structures of the old shops remain today. Hillyard suffers
some of the worst poverty in Spokane, per capita it is the poorest
neighborhood in the state of Washington.
Hillyard continues as a neighborhood of Spokane in which residents
take pride. A Hillyard Festival is held every year in August, and
the preservation of historic buildings is a local concern. Murals
and a small railroad museum celebrate the town's history. Many of
the neighborhood's residents are descended from the railroad
workers who started the town, but Hillyard is recently becoming a
popular home for immigrants of Russian, Micronesian, and Southeast
Asian descent. The downtown Hillyard business district, located on
Market Street, has become Spokane's first neighborhood to be listed
in the National Register of Historic Places. According to Teresa
Brum, Spokane's Historic Preservation Officer in charge of the
project to have Hillyard listed on the National Register: "This is
the most architecturally intact neighborhood left in Spokane. Most
of it looks as it did 90 years ago." Hillyard neighborhood is still
there and is still supporting the lower to lower middle class of
Spokane
The above quoted from Wikipedia
About Spokane
Pools:
The Parks and Recreation
Department is developing an Aquatics Master Plan for the next 50
years.
Several community meetings
have been held, and more will be scheduled for a presentation that
illustrates a wide variety of swimming and aquatics features that
could be included in the Aquatics Master Plan. The
presentation can be viewed on the Parks Department Web site at
www.spokaneparks.org and public
comments may be left at the same location.
The above quoted from Spokane
Parks and Rec