page_title: Economy of Spokane, Washington
section_title: Mining boom
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of Spokane, Washington / Economic history overview / Mining boom
caption_attribution_description: railroad switchyard switch engine, Spokane, Washington / 2007
context_page_description: The economy of the Spokane Metropolitan Area plays a vital role as the hub for the commercial, manufacturing, and transportation center as well as the medical, shopping, and entertainment hub of the 80,000 square miles Inland Northwest region. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Spokane metropolitan area has a workforce of about 287,000 people and an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent as of February 2020; the largest sectors for non–farm employment are education and health services, trade, transportation, and utilities, and government. The Coeur d'Alene metropolitan area has a workforce of 80,000 people and an unemployment rate of 6.8% as of June 2020; the largest sectors for non-farm employment are trade, transportation, and utilities, government, and education and health services as well as leisure and hospitality.In 2017, the Spokane–Spokane Valley metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of $25.5 billion while the Coeur d'Alene metropolitan area was $5.93 billion.
context_section_description: The 1883 discovery of gold, silver, and lead in the Coeur d'Alene region of northern Idaho lured prospectors. The Inland Empire erupted with numerous mining rushes from 1883 to 1892. At the onset of the initial 1883 gold rush in the nearby Coeur d'Alene mining district, Spokane became popular with prospectors, offering low prices on everything "from a horse to a frying pan". It would keep this status for subsequent rushes in the region due to its trade center status and accessibility to railroad infrastructure.
  
  Spokane became an important rail and shipping center because of its location between mining and farming areas (namely the Silver Valley and the Palouse). After the arrival of the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, Great Northern, and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific railroads, Spokane became one of the most important rail centers in the western United States, being the site of four transcontinental railroads. Secretary of the Spokane chamber of commerce, John R. Reavis tells of Spokane's significance to the Inland Northwest region as an entrepôt distributing center (largely the city's raison d'être) in his 1891 Annual Report, writing: 
  "By reason of her geographical position and railroad connections Spokane is fitted as no other city is, or ever can be, to be the distributing center of all that country within a radius of 150 miles, and in some instances territory much farther away. There is no point 150 miles from Spokane that is not at least 225 miles from any other city of 10,000 population. We have about us a territory of 60,000 square miles in extent, to every point of which we are nearer than any other city, to every point of which we have better railroad connections and easier grades than any other city ... We have eight lines of railroad that radiate out in all directions through it, so that shipments made here in the morning can reach any point within its borders by nightfall. We have a telephone system connecting us with almost every shipping town and shipping station within its borders. Goods may be ordered, shipped and received, in most instances, within one day. Never was a city more intimately knit to its surrounding territory than Spokane, and never was one more free from a legitimate rival in trade ..."
caption: Locomotive in Spokane's classification yard
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