Events Calendar
*CLUB MEETING*
With the weather warming and people being able to meet in small groups the club will have a meeting out doors in April.
This meeting will be held at Plante's Ferry Park at Noon.
We ask that everyone please social distance as a courtesy and safety precaution.
The meeting will be in the parking lot. Please bring your own chair.
Bring ideas for future events. Please remember Club Membership dues come due April 1.
Some will be bringing a sack lunch or take-out to have together after the regular meeting.
Situated comfortably along the north bank of the Spokane River is Plante’s Ferry Park, the birthplace of the city of Spokane Valley. It is named after it the first “citizen” of Spokane Valley, Antoine Plante. Antoine Plante, a half French Canadian, half Blackfoot Indian retired fur trader, came to the Spokane Valley in 1849 after leaving his first wife, a Pend Oreille woman named Mary Therese. Plante would eventually remarry a member of the Flathead tribe, also named Mary. The couple had a child, a boy named Charles.
The Hudson Bay Company approached Plante and the two came to an agreement that would allow Antoine Plante to operate a fur trading outpost from his new home. To facilitate the needs of his post, Plante constructed a ferry to cross the river later that year. At the time, this was the only operation of its kind in the area.
Plante’s Ferry was the first business located in the Spokane Valley as well as the first permanent residence. The ferry was used by fur traders and common man alike. The price to cross the Spokane River was four dollars a wagon, five cents a man, and four cents an animal. Men, often times in groups of ten or more, would line up to be taken across the water. The rafts Plante used were large wooden skiffs that could navigate the water with relative ease.
Today, Plante’s Ferry is property of the Spokane Valley Junior Soccer Administration. The park is also home to the Plante’s Ferry Soccer Complex, located along the river, not far from the where Antoine Plante’s ferry was in operation. A plaque was erected along the north bank of the river to commemorate the location where Antoine Plante ran the ferry so many years ago.