100 years ago in Spokane: Some saw a silver lining for a prize fighter’s latest match elsewhere

With heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey performing his vaudeville act in Spokane, there was talk of the highly anticipated Dempsey-Carpentier fight on the Alan Race Track east of Spokane. Dempsey even took a trip to the construction site to see it.

Tex Rickard, the promoter, immediately dashed those hopes and said the fight would “take place elsewhere”. (It turned out Jersey City, New Jersey.)

The editors of the Spokane Daily Chronicle said it was “okay” with them. Although editors admitted that this would have meant “money is coming to town”, the event would have had its downsides.

“A great price war always brings a certain following of the ‘undesirables’ to the city where it’s staged,” said an editorial. “And this city is taking on the reputation of a price war city – a reputation that is unattractive and difficult to lose.”

In short, Spokane may have had reason to “deeply regret it”.

From the arctic beat: Three Spokane men who were working on a Riblet Tramway Co. project on an island in Alaska’s Bering Sea were stranded on the island for four months.

A storm made them miss the last boat. You were stranded in a mining camp with 18 other men.

“It was pretty hard to miss the boat and face a long hard winter and it turned out to be more difficult than we expected,” said one of the Spokane men.

“We just had to read and make a fire. It often got as cold as 50 below. It was blowing and snowing all the time, and to make matters worse, Sam, our cook, went insane. “