Jim Kershner

From 1976: A Spokane Chronicle front page photo showed Coeur d'Alene's “newly landscaped area, sandy beach steps and view,” made possible by the removal of the former Playland Pier on the lakefront.

From 1976: The Earthlife Festival and Farmers Market made its summer debut in Riverfront Park,

From 1976: The annual Frontier Days celebration in Springdale, Washington, got so rowdy that the town marshal, Al Goad, stepped in and “closed down the town.”

From 1976: About 59 inmates broke out of city custody and ran free downtown, but officers managed to get all but eight escapees back into their cells.

From 1976: A bass fisherman made a gruesome discovery in Fernan Lake near Coeur d'Alene. He spotted a submerged car with bodies inside.

From 1976: A steamy adult-film screening took place, right in the Spokane County Courthouse.

From 1976: A citizen called in an alarming report: A bomb had been planted on the Burlington Northern railroad tracks at the Rambo Road crossing.

From 1976: The Spokane Chronicle ran a tongue-in-cheek humor column about a “big new industry for eastern Washington entrepreneurs”: A “Merriment on Mars” vacation package.

From 1976: The summer of 1976 was “the worst season of labor unrest” in the Inland Northwest in decades, according to a federal labor negotiator.

From 1976: A new kind of business was booming in Spokane: “mini-warehousing,” or self-storage, as we would call it today.