NOTE: To access this cache, you may have to leave Spokane County and take a side road back into the county.
The John Wayne Pioneer Trail follows the former railway roadbed of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road ) for 300 miles (480 km) across two-thirds of Washington from the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains to the Idaho border. The trail is named in honor of the John Wayne Pioneer Wagons and Riders Association for their assistance in creating the trail. This undeveloped portion of the trail provides access to the unique geological erosion features of the Channeled Scablands regions of the state of Washington, and several stretches have been recognized as providing access to this area created by the cataclysmic Missoula Floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Plateau during the Pleistocene epoch.
Robert Strahorn was a businessman, writer and promoter who was 25 when he was hired by Jay Gould of the Union Pacific Railroad as a publicist. For several years, Strahorn, along with wife Dell, roamed the Idaho territory by stagecoach and wrote about the beauty and promise of the Western frontier. He helped plan rail routes and invested in townsites by the new tracks.
In 1888, Strahorn joined the developers of Fairhaven, a town south of Bellingham that they hoped would be the western terminus of James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad. The deal fell apart when Hill chose Seattle instead. He created a thriving trading business in Boston in the 1890s but decided to move back to Spokane in 1898 to start his own railroad.
He and his wife, now comfortably wealthy, bought a Spokane mansion and remodeled it for lavish entertaining. Strahorn made an alliance with the Union Pacific’s Edward Harriman, a bitter nemesis of Hill’s, that in exchange for anonymity, Harriman would provide the capital for Strahorn’s North Coast Railroad. Strahorn built the Union Depot in downtown Spokane at a cost of $500,000 and persuaded the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railroad, known as the Milwaukee Road, to use the depot.
Strahorn kept adding short lines to the North Coast, connecting to Seattle in 1914. He continued to build his network of lines and outmaneuver Hill’s Great Northern, but the Great Depression was a catastrophe. Overextended on credit, Strahorn signed everything over to creditors and died a poor man in 1944.
2015 is the inaugural year of Spokane GeoTour. This Spokane County tour will send geocachers on a trip through Spokane History, finding caches in areas of historical significance. Visit urban and rural gems, historic farming communities, forts, geological marvels, and seek new adventures. The Spokane History GeoTour rewards those who complete with a commemorative geocoin featuring the native Spokane Salish language.
- Visit Spokane GeoTour to view a list and map of qualifying caches. All caches begin with the series name "SHGT:" followed by a location specific name.
- Be sure to read the challenge rules and print your passport at SpokaneGeoTour.com.
- You must record the cache code word on the passport with the code inside each GeoTour cache to qualify for a geocoin.
The Spokane History GeoTour is sponsored by Spokane County TPA, Cache Advance, and Washington State Geocaching Association (WSGA). We hope you enjoy the tour!
