Spokane, Washington
city in and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States
Spokane ( spoh-KAN; Spokane: sƛ̓x̌etkʷ) is a city in and the county seat of Spokane County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, 110 miles (180 km) south of the Canadian border, twenty miles (30 km) west of the Idaho state line, 279 miles (449 km) southwest of Calgary, and 280 miles (450 km) east of Seattle, via I-90.
Spokane is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the second-most populous city in all of Washington (after Seattle), with a population of 228,989 at the 2020 census, while the Spokane metropolitan area has an estimated 605,000 residents.
Spokane is the economic and cultural center of the Inland Northwest. It is known as the birthplace of Father's Day, and locally by the nickname of "Lilac City". Officially, Spokane goes by the nickname of Hooptown USA, due to Spokane's annual hosting of the Spokane Hoopfest, the world's largest 3-on-3 basketball tournament. The city and the wider Inland Northwest area are served by Spokane International Airport, 5 miles (8 km) west of Downtown Spokane, which is located near another airfield at Fairchild Air Force Base.
The first people to live in the area, the Spokane tribe (their name meaning "children of the sun" in Salishan), lived off plentiful game. David Thompson explored the area with the westward expansion and establishment of the North West Company's Spokane House in 1810. This trading post was the first long-term European settlement in Washington.
The public source identifies “Spokane, Washington” as city in and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Spokane, Washington and city.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Spokane, Washington”, the useful work is to connect “city in and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q187805. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 1810.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Spokane, Washington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.