From 1975: A Spokesman-Review reporter test-drove the “first electric car offered for sale in Spokane for more than 45 years.”
The verdict? It was “best described as being similar to taking the controls of a slightly oversized golf cart.”
On level ground, the CitiCar, a two-seater powered by eight 6-volt batteries, cruised effortlessly at 30 mph.
Yet the car gave the reporter a few nervous moments when he tried to drive up the Freya Street hill.
“At long last the car prevailed as it cleared the top of the hill at Eighteenth at a speed of 13 miles per hour,” the reporter wrote. “A red light lit on its dashboard indicating its electric motor was overheating.”
The dealer said, “the car would soon cool off, but said it might be best to choose hills less steep.”
The car retailed at $3,200.
From 1925: The Spokane Daily Chronicle visited “a little colony of German-Russians of the Mennonite faith” in the southeast corner of Pend Oreille County.
The 75 people in the colony were “converting acres of waste brush land into rows of neat farms” through sheer toil.
They were originally from the south of Russia. After “the Bolshevik trouble,” conditions “went from bad to worse,” and they came to a Mennonite colony in Newton, Kansas. Then they sent a representative to Spokane, looked over some land and decided to establish their own colony in the region.
“Development was slow,” the Chronicle reported. “The colonists could speak little English and they knew little of American methods. They are learning.”
One colonist asked the reporter if there was a night school in Spokane for foreigners.
“I want to learn to speak English better,” the colonist said. “All of us should go.”
