Greenacres, Washington — Real-Estate Promise Became a Neighborhood

Greenacres began as both agricultural development and advertising.

Early twentieth-century promoters sold Spokane Valley land with a vision of irrigated orchards, and for a time the landscape delivered. Wells and water systems supported extensive apple production, while packing houses, cold storage and rail connections turned fruit into a regional industry.

The orchard economy later stumbled under frost, disease, oversupply and competition.

What survived was the land's other advantage: proximity to Spokane. Housing, industry and commercial development spread across former orchard parcels, and much of Greenacres eventually became part of the City of Spokane Valley.

The trees largely disappeared.

The developers' optimistic name proved much harder to uproot.