The Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad Company (S.&I.E.R.R.Co.) was a railroad company that operated an electric streetcar system in Spokane, Washington and an electrified interurban railway extending beyond Spokane into the Palouse region and northern Idaho. The raildroad company also constructed and operated a central terminal building and Nine Mile Dam.The system originated in several predecessor roads beginning in 1888, was incorporated in 1906, and ran under its own name to 1929. It merged into the Great Northern Railway and later, the Burlington Northern Railroad, which operated some roads into the 1980s.
One of the earliest components of Spokane's early mass transit system was the Spokane and Montrose Street Railway, a narrow-gauge system with the distinction of being the first motorized street railway in Spokane. Its owner, in 1893, was Francis H. Cook (1851âÂÂ1920). Cook, embarrassed by the Panic of 1893, sold the line to a group of Spokane businessmen headed by Jay P. Graves (1859âÂÂ1948) in 1902. Prior to this Graves and his partners had bought Cook's foreclosed land holdings in the Spokane area.
Graves and partners from Portland, Oregon, reorganized the Spokane and Montrose as the Spokane Traction Company on February 1, 1903, incorporated it as the Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad Company in 1906, and rebuilt it as a standard gauge line. The routes were extended through various areas of Spokane, including Corbin Park, Hillyard and Lincoln Heights. Initially, power for the line was purchased from the Washington Water Power Company. However, in 1909, Graves built a hydroelectric dam at Nine Mile Falls, Washington. This went on to power not only Spokane Traction and the Spokane and Inland Empire, but also sold surplus power locally.
During this same period, Idaho Lumberman Frederick A. Blackwell (1852âÂÂ1922) organized the Coeur dâÂÂAlene and Spokane Railway. Operating in conjunction with the Graves' lines in 1903 it formed a route between Spokane and Lake Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho. Together, Graves and Blackwell developed properties along this line. "To increase summer and holiday ridership," historian Laura Arksey notes, "Graves and Blackwell opened beaches and amusement parks on Coeur dâÂÂAlene, Hayden, and Liberty lakes." The electric railway platform in Coeur d'Alene was built onto the docks to connect with steamboats on Lake Coeur d'Alene.
Blackwell and Graves, together with James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway, pushed the interurban lines to the south into the Palouse Country, eventually reaching Colfax, Washington, and Moscow, Idaho. This extension was operated under the name Spokane and Inland Empire. In 1908, Spokane Traction was sold to the Spokane and Inland Empire, but operated as a separate division. Hill purchased the Spokane and Inland Empire in 1909, retaining Graves as local president. Spokane and Inland Empire gradually reduced electric-powered passenger operations. In 1909, two Spokane and Inland Empire trains collided head on at Gibbs, Idaho (near Coeur d'Alene) killing 16 people and injuring over 100. This was the deadliest railroad accident in the state of Idaho.
According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, the Spokane and Inland Empire was folded into the Great Northern Railway in 1927. The last electric line run to Moscow was recorded in April 1939, and the last electric line run to Coeur d'Alene came in July 1940.
In his history of the Spokane and Inland Empire, author Clive Carter asserts that although the interurban lines were financially unstable and expensive to operate, the outright purchase was warranted due to the large traffic the lines fed into the Great Northern system. This thinking led Hill to his purchase of the lines in 1909. However, following the Burlington Northern Railroad merger of 1970, the old interurban system was unprofitable and/or redundant (much of it was paralleled by routes of the former Northern Pacific Railway) and the Spokane and Inland Empire system was scrapped almost in its entirety between 1970 and 1985.
The only S&IE piece of equipment left is a lone boxcar at the Inland Northwest Rail Museum in Reardan, WA.
Several Trails incorporate the Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad right-of-way:
Several structures of the Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad still stand: