WHEN IN 1878 William Chandler Gray of Maine and California, hotel man and construction superintendent with the Southern Pacific railroad, paid two hundred dollars for a hotel site of sixty by one hundred forty-two feet on the corner of Front{65} and Howard streets, the wiseacres called it a fancy price. The location was admittedly the choicest business corner in Spokane Falls. But what a sum to pay for it!
Bill Gray, Scotch-Irish descended, Yankee-born and Western-matured, thought otherwise. Spokane Falls seemed a likely business center; it ought to develop into a railroad center. Nor was that all. Unlike the construction camps where he had spent so much of his time in recent years, this little northern community was a place in which he could make a home. Most of the men there already had their families with them, and that was something well worth consideration by a married man with a wife like his. Clara Smiley Gray, a native of Maine with a fine family background, was a young woman of culture and education owning a diploma from an Eastern “Seminary” and a teaching certificate as well. The six years of their marriage had been no life for a lady. For-one thing, she had no settled home; and when, like a good pal, she followed Bill into the rough railroad camps where his work took him, she was deprived not only of the niceties of civilized existence but of the companionship of refined women. Spokane Falls would be a definite step upward in their way of life. Bill was sure Clara would like the place. Nor would she mind setting up housekeeping in an infant community boasting but nine families when she found out what wholesome, friendly folks made up those families and realized, with him, that the Falls was marked for steady growth. Bill Gray laid down the price of the corner lot gladly and made haste to telegraph Clara in Oakland, California, to set out at once for the unknown Pacific Northwest together with her two young brothers to whom the Grays were foster parents.{66}
In her six years as a construction superintendent’s wife Clara Smiley Gray had learned to pack up and move in a hurry. Into her trunk without delay went dainty ruffled petticoats, lace-edged chemises and nightgowns, and well-made outer garments of wool, gingham, and finer materials, including a shimmering black-silk evening dress with a stylish polonaise of Spanish lace. For the reunion with her husband and introduction to Spokane Falls she kept out a snug-fitting frock of rustling silk decorated with bands of velvet surmounting a fringe. From a small bustle the fabric descended to the floor in a series of shirrings and puffs; and a collar of velvet ribbon was topped by a white neckband open in front. Gazing critically at her slender, dark-haired image in the mirror, at her hair in curls high on her head, with two long ringlets dropping downward from the nape of her neck, Clara Gray was satisfied.{67} One did not meet one’s husband shabbily attired after a period of separation, even though the way to the meeting place might be long and tiresome. Moreover, it was important to make a good first impression in Spokane Falls, for she had her husband’s word for it that the community included several very nice women and a number of well-bred men.
By the first of September the prospective mistress of Captain Bill Gray’s California House (the “Captain” was gratuitous) and her two young brothers found themselves in Walla Walla. The trip to Portland and up the Columbia to Wallula had not been bad; but the rest of the journey——That strap-iron railroad! Passengers explained to her that in surveying the route the crew had contrived a level from a whiskey bottle partly filled with water and that the rails made of four-by-six wooden stringers had been surfaced with rawhide{68} until coyotes discovered what an appetizing meal the leather made, whereupon strap-iron had had to be substituted. Even then there had been possibilities of serious trouble, the passengers continued, for a strip of iron might work loose any time to rip a hole in the floor of the single passenger car—an open boxcar fitted with lengthwise benches and referred to as “The Hearse.”
Clara Gray was glad she was now riding on steel rails, although the second-hand coach in which she sat was no very great improvement over “The Hearse.” It was hot; and through the open windows poured clouds of dust and smoke from “The Mountain Queen,” the small wood-burning “critter” trimmed with brass, on the cowcatcher of which she had observed a collie dog. If cattle wandered onto the right of way, explained her fellow passengers, the dog was sent to drive them off.
The two boys accompanying Clara Gray had been all eyes and ears. They were having a wonderful time. Not so their older sister and foster mother. She doubted that the heavy veil tied over her hat would protect her curls from the dust and cinders that lighted all over her clothes. The passengers, all men, were courteous enough in their hearty way, and full of jokes and laughter; but there were so many of them, and she the only woman! During the thirty-mile ride they exchanged jokes with the perspiring fireman on the platform that trundled with its load of wood behind the engine, and cheered appreciatively when the engineer shouted to sweating foot travelers plodding alongside under heavy packs, “Hot day, want a ride?” and got back a “Gosh, no! We’re in a hurry!”
Walla Walla, though simmering in September heat and dust, was a real relief. It offered temporary respite from travel and a chance to live with her husband in respectable lodgings for the several weeks required to assemble supplies and purchase two covered wagons to transport the family and their belongings over the last leg of the journey northward.
On the final four-day trip, the Grays found simple overnight accommodations in the home of a settler or in a rough structure of unpainted lumber labeled “Hotel” that graced an infrequent one-street village. Once the prairie schooner in which Clara Gray rode tipped over; but no great harm was done and the obliging settler who came to the rescue begged in return only a swig of rum for his wife, who, he sadly assured Clara Gray, was nearly dead from getting out the weekly family wash.
Kindly Frederic Post was on hand to welcome the travelers on the October evening when the wagons creaked to a dusty halt before what had until recently been Glover’s store, but was now Cannon and Warner’s. Glover had given up merchandising that year, rented his store, and sold an undivided half-interest in his Spokane Falls real estate to a pair of live-wire promoters, Anthony M. Cannon and J. J. Browne. These two, as Clara Gray soon learned, were already deep in the business of selling city lots in the sagebrush at the rate of fifty dollars each. As for Glover, he was contracting for the Northern Pacific, now definitely under construction in the Inland Empire.
One glance at Mrs. Gray’s dress with its silken puffs, considerably crushed but still bespeaking a real lady, and at the size of the small gloved hand extended to him made it clear to the good-hearted miller that here was no candidate for a lengthy stay in Doc Masterson’s rough and ready establishment within whose walls Post saw the Gray’s installed for the night. Very shortly he returned to announce that Mrs. Post and the five Post girls would be more than happy to make room for the entire Gray family in their comfortable home on a bluff overlooking the river; and there the Grays remained until a two-room log cabin, left roofless and floorless by last year’s military contingent, could be fashioned into a temporary home.
Life in the log cabin that first winter was far from dull. No sooner had Clara Gray begun housekeeping for her family of three than she was presented with two boarders, workmen employed on her husband’s hotel, then under construction. When the baking powder biscuit dough so laboriously kneaded into loaves emerged from the oven looking most unsatisfactory and tasting more so, neighborly Mrs. Warner, engaged in teaching Indian women how to make yeast bread, not only supplied Clara with a starter of yeast but initiated her into the art of baking “raised” bread.
The days were filled with unexpected happenings. One day Nelly, daughter of Spokane Garry, village laundress, and far more belligerent than her father, marched into the Gray cabin unannounced and without a word gathered into her blanket all the food in sight on the shelf-table at which Clara Gray and the two boys sat eating. The three of them were still sitting in open-mouthed astonishment when Nelly on the way out ran into the master of the cabin, who shook her until the last morsel of food fell from her blanket to the floor. That was the end of the episode, except, of course, that the family dinner had to be prepared all over again.
The log cabin itself was a source of catastrophe. Walls and roof were far from airtight, and on a winter day when the thermometer hovered around zero, steam from the kettle condensed and fell in icy drops on the floor. When the worried housewife poured on hot water, the result was a skating rink, not unappreciated by the two boys, but less than desirable to their sister’s way of thinking.
The season was still winter and the town agog with social excitement when the Gray family moved into the unfinished hotel. The reason for the excitement was the imminence of the prime social event of the year—a dance in the hall above the Cannon and Warner store for the benefit of the public school, by that time housed in a twenty by thirty foot frame building erected exclusively for school purposes alongside the Northern Pacific right of way.{69} Such an event was not to be missed by the sprightly little lady of the California House, where a late supper was to be served by the local women in the still unfinished dining room. Clara Gray shook out her party dress with the Spanish lace and hung it in a makeshift wardrobe curtained off by two sheets, Alas, the half-finished hotel was no more weatherproof than the cabin. When the festive evening arrived, Clara found the lace of her dress frozen fast to the rough board wall. For a moment she eyed the rigid folds of the gown in consternation. Then came a happy thought. In the kitchen a flatiron was soon heating on the ever-ready wood stove, A few well-considered applications of iron to lace and the dress swung free from the wall, needing only a little pressing to make it look like new.
Garbed in filmy elegance, Clara Gray tripped daintily through the figures of the usual square dances to the energetic sawing of the fiddles. Then after a pause the fiddlers, egged on by a gay young man in military uniform, struck up a wholly new rhythm and the lady in the lace polonaise found herself gliding over the creaking floor in a waltz. Most of the other dancers stopped to watch. Suddenly aware of the eyes upon her, Clara Gray extricated herself with seemly haste from what the old-timers set down as the first waltz ever danced in Spokane Falls. The fiddles went back to their usual rhythm and the caller roared out his
S’lute your ladies, all together,....
Hit the lumber with your leather
Balance all and swing your dame!
The community as a whole looked forward with nearly as much impatience to the opening of the California House as did the Grays themselves. All watched the two and a half story frame building take shape and speculated on interior arrangements and heating. In the absence of brick, stovepipe would obviously have to do here as elsewhere for lesser chimneys, but how about a flue for the big heating stove which Bill Gray was known to have purchased and without which no up-to-date hotel was complete? The answer was provided when a huge chimney made of tin arrived from Colfax and was painted to look like brick. Gradually the watchers saw the second floor partitioned off into eight bedrooms above which, they learned, was to be an attic “corral” with a double bed in each corner where men could bunk down with their blankets for four bits a night.{70} Floors and billiard tables downstairs might also serve for lodgment in case of emergency. There would be a bar, and an ample dining room serving meals at four bits each.
When at last the structure was complete a serious situation arose. There was no cook to be had in Spokane Falls, and Bill Gray had no intention of letting his wife serve in that capacity. A neighbor came to the rescue. Over at Rathdrum was “Duke,” an old colored man reputed to be adept with skillet and biscuit tin. Mrs. Alexander Warner announced that she would borrow a horse and buggy and drive over to engage him. She was sick and tired of doing her own cooking and the hotel just had to take over. No sooner said than done. “Duke” was installed as chef, and the California House announced the format opening of its dining room.
Trying to be helpful with preparations for the long-heralded event, Clara Gray filled the cream pitchers in the evening and set them on the breakfast tables ready for use next morning. Once more the thermometer was her undoing. By morning the cream was ice. The boarders laughed. They were mostly men, and here was another good opportunity to indulge in good-natured raillery at the expense of Bill Gray’s wife, who could be counted on for a quick retort. There was that story about the needles—town talk. When Bill Gray’s wife went to the Warner and Cannon store to buy a package, Cannon solemnly broke open the paper container and doled out a single needle, price one dime, on account of freight! Well, you had to admit freight was dam high, but not that high! However, what did Mrs. Gray do but lay down a dime and go off with the needle without a word. It made Cannon sort of uneasy. Mebbe she didn’t understand the joke was one regularly sprung on a tenderfoot. But he needn’t have worried. Next time the Grays were invited to a party where’s Cannon was also a guest, you should have heard her version of the story. It brought down the house. Cannon would never hear the last of it.
“Duke’s” career as cook was short. The Chinese ex-laundryman who succeeded him was fine, when sober, and on his occasional sprees the neighbor women always came right in to preside over the cookstove until the emergency was past. Thus the California House dining room remained open without interruption.
In the nine years the Grays ran their hotel the place never saw a shooting in spite of the presence in the town of some rough characters. About the only time that the gun standing in a corner was ever fired was on the occasion of an Indian scare. When an excited messenger rode into town to report an imminent attack, the Cowleys, the Brownes, the Cannons, and others hastily repaired to the hotel. Presently there was a sharp report and a bullet buried itself in the dining-room wall. All thought the worst had come. But fright gave way to peals of laughter when it turned out that the dread enemy was only Bill Gray’s old hunting piece, accidentally brushed against and discharged by its fall.
Neither Captain Bill nor his wife placed much reliance on firearms when it came to dealing with Indians, rambunctious guests, or interlopers. A weapon only invited trouble. There were better ways to handle a potentially dangerous situation. The affair of Chief Moses of the Spokanes was a case in point. He was sometimes surly, he had a low opinion of women and of white squaws in particular. However, when the diminutive mistress of the California House held out a welcoming hand while, in her best Chinook, issuing an invitation to dinner, the chief’s heart softened. He accepted—and ever after when in town he came uninvited to dine in the house of his friend, the white squaw.
Hank Vaughn was a character unpleasantly known in most of the Inland Empire. He had a well-established reputation as horse thief and desperado, and after a drinking bout his favorite pastime was to ride his horse into the nearest hostelry. Just how the proprietor of the California House met the situation on the two or three occasions when Hank appeared there is uncertain, but, each time, the overenthusiastic horseman was persuaded to cease and desist without recourse either to the law or to firearms.
Once in a while some other rampaging or trigger-happy individual had to be escorted from the premises. Hank Vaughn’s local crony, saloonkeeper Bob Knox, was one such. Everyone in town could tell how Vaughn and Knox had once settled a temporary misunderstanding with a shooting bout conducted from opposite sides of the street. Consequently, when one day Bob erupted into the hotel office gun in hand and announced in appropriate language that he had come for that——wife of his, who would go home with him or else, Bill Gray knew he had to act quickly. Calming his enraged visitor with soothing words, he steered him gently out the door into the arms of the law as represented by Pat Corbaley, sheriff.
Practically every person of consequence who visited the Falls, to say nothing of most of the men and women who helped to build a firm foundation for the present city, registered at the California House. Frederic Ward of Shakespeare fame signed the ledger, as did Emma Abbot and other actors of the period, for Spokane folks were always ready to turn out to a good show, in an improvised theatre if necessary. The name of Robert Ingersoll, famous lawyer and opponent of orthodox Christianity, could be found in its pages, and, at the other extreme, that of Father Joseph M. Cataldo, who came with Father Jossette to plan the first Catholic church and was always a well-liked guest. Among later guests were Mother Joseph and Sister Joseph Arimathea of the Order of the Sacred Heart, who arrived in the interest of a hospital. Mother Joseph was an excellent draftsman and architect, and plans for the first quarters of the Sacred Heart Hospital were drawn on a table in the California House dining room. About the same time the register revealed the names of coming executives of the Coeur d’Alene mines, as well as railroad officials like General Sprague of the Northern Pacific, who told Gray his hotel was too small and lent money to enlarge it.
The place was never merely a hostelry—it was a community center, the circle of sturdy chairs about the office stove quickly rivaling the store as news office and public forum. Feet on the stove, solid citizens discussed the affairs of the little city at their ease, hatched ideas for its upbuilding and welfare, or entertained newcomers with glowing accounts of the Inland Empire’s future, mixed with occasional tall tales and drinks at the well-run bar. The dining room was a civic and social club, where ladies joined their menfolk to laugh and chatter or to make plans for charity balls and other welfare and social activities.
Almost from the start the California House proved inadequate for the many demands made upon it. Periodically it had to be enlarged. With each increase in capacity went “improvements”; among them, thanks to a new brickyard in the town, the substitution of a brick chimney for the makeshift of tin. In 1888, after a fire, Bill Gray tore down what was Left of the place to erect a new building called the Windsor House. And so Spokane Falls’ first hostelry deserving the name of hotel came to an end.
The Grays stepped out of the hotel business. By that time Clara Smiley Gray had had enough of supervising a domain of many rooms and varied social usage and longed for the quiet comfort of a small home. But with Bill Gray it was different. He had become a man of local prominence as well as of ample means. He had been Spokane Fails’ first councilman, in which office he had succeeded himself five times. He was a prime mover in all sorts of civic enterprises. He coveted a big house on the south hill; not as a matter of ostentatious display but as the outward evidence of an established position. The mansion he built cost the then notable sum of twenty thousand dollars and was outfitted with the best of everything. Good-humoredly, Clara dubbed it “Gray’s Folly,” and so in a way it was; for her health was not of the best and in the first two years after the completion of the big house she spent much of her time in the seclusion of a farm they had purchased some distance away. Later, they lived in the house on the hill. The time came when it was rented; first to a succession of prominent citizens, then to a doctor, and after that as a sanitarium. Today, a Safeway Store occupies the site where once stood “Gray’s Folly.”
Long after Bill Gray’s death, the ushers at Westminster Congregational Church each Sunday morning escorted to a pew well up in front an old lady dressed in well-worn black that suggested thinness of purse as well as the modesty becoming age. But over in the Eastern Washington Historical Museum, when the one-time lady of California House was finally laid to rest beside her husband, they unpacked and prepared for display the gowns of brocaded silk and soft challis in which she had danced and entertained in the days when the polonaise, the leg-o’-mutton sleeve, and the small well-boned bodice were the very latest style.