Where to Stay in Spokane Valley, Washington

What is Spokane Valley known for?

Spokane Valley is known for Mirabeau Point Park, Avista Stadium, and the retail run of Sprague Avenue through the middle of the city. The park spreads north of Interstate 90 beside the Spokane River, holding the CenterPlace Regional Event Center, the Discovery Playground, and the waterfall at Mirabeau Springs. Baseball fills Avista Stadium in summer.

Out on Sprague Avenue the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum keeps the valley's record inside the Opportunity Township Hall, a brick and stucco building of 1912, and the Spokane Valley Mall gathers the eastern trade off Indiana Avenue.

What are the main landmarks in Spokane Valley?

Spokane Valley keeps its landmarks on two lines, the Spokane River in the north and Sprague Avenue through the middle. The Spokane Valley Heritage Museum works out of the Opportunity Township Hall, a brick and stucco seat of township government finished in 1912 in the Spanish Colonial Revival manner and later entered on the National Register. The hall outlived the township.

Mirabeau Point Park answers it from the river side, with the CenterPlace Regional Event Center, the Discovery Playground and a spring-fed fall at Mirabeau Springs. Avista Stadium has stood at the county fairgrounds off Havana Street since 1958. The Spokane River Centennial Trail follows the water across the north of the city.

What is the history of Spokane Valley?

Spokane Valley became a city on 31 March 2003, though the ground it covers had been farmed for more than a century by then. Irrigation arrived in 1895. Water turned a dry gravel plain into orchard country, and fruit sheds and packing lines stood along the rail lines that crossed the valley floor.

Opportunity, Dishman and Veradale grew as separate townships, and in 1912 Opportunity raised the Opportunity Township Hall as its seat of government. Spokane University ran a liberal arts campus in the valley from 1913 until the Depression closed it in 1933, leaving its name on University Road. Avista Stadium went up at the county fairgrounds in 1958.

War work and postwar building then turned the orchards into suburban streets, the farm lots became street grids, and the townships ran together into one continuous settlement with no government of its own. Four attempts to incorporate failed. The fifth carried at a vote in May 2002, and on 31 March 2003 Dishman, Opportunity, Veradale, Trentwood and part of Greenacres were joined as the City of Spokane Valley.

Millwood and Liberty Lake stayed out and remain separate cities, and the protected Dishman Hills were left outside the new line. The Spokane Valley Heritage Museum opened in the old township hall in 2005 and keeps that record there.

Where is Spokane Valley?

Spokane Valley occupies the floor of the Spokane River valley in Spokane County, Washington, between Spokane to the west and the Idaho line to the east. The river crosses the north of the city, and most of the street grid lies south of it. Glacial Lake Missoula did the digging.

Repeated failures of the ice dam that held it sent the Missoula Floods down this trench and left the gravel that now carries the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. Barker Road closes the city on the east, the Dishman Hills stand just outside the southwestern corner, and the small hills toward Mica Peak and the Palouse rise to the south. Millwood sits enclosed on three sides.

Shelley Lake, fed by Saltese Creek, lies inside the line.

What is Spokane Valley like?

Spokane Valley sets its calendar by the gatherings at Mirabeau Point Park and the county fairgrounds. Valleyfest takes over Mirabeau Point Park and the CenterPlace Regional Event Center each September, and sends the Hearts of Gold parade down Sprague Avenue. The Spokane County Fair and Expo Center opens its ten-day interstate fair on the Friday after Labor Day, and the Inland Northwest Craft Beer Festival follows at Avista Stadium.

Theatre keeps a season too. The Spokane Valley Summer Theatre plays the Central Valley Performing Arts Center, and the Spokane Valley Arts Council hangs work by local artists in the foyer of the CenterPlace Regional Event Center.

What is the climate of Spokane Valley?

Spokane Valley has the dry inland climate of eastern Washington, warm in summer and cold in winter. July is the driest month. The valley floor holds long clear spells then, and the shade at Mirabeau Point Park and the water at Mirabeau Springs earn their keep.

Wet weather comes with the dark half of the year and peaks in December, which is when the indoor rooms of the CenterPlace Regional Event Center and the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum take up much of the visiting.

How do you get to Spokane Valley?

Spokane Valley is reached from Interstate 90, which crosses the city between Spokane and Coeur d'Alene with interchanges at Argonne Road, Pines Road, Sullivan Road and Barker Road. Sprague Avenue carries the business route alongside it, running one way against Appleway Boulevard a block to the south. Trent Avenue takes the northern side of the valley as State Route 290, and Pines Road heads south as State Route 27 toward the Palouse.

Spokane International Airport lies beyond Spokane on the far side of the county, and Felts Field, the older airfield on the Spokane River, marks the city's northwestern limit. Neither airfield is inside the line. Spokane Transit Authority buses work the valley out of the Pence-Cole Valley Transit Center.