Amasa B. Campbell

Born in Ohio in 1845, Amasa—known to his friends as "Mace"—left home in 1867 to work for the Union Pacific Railroad. By 1887, his ambitions brought him to Spokane Falls, where he partnered with John A. Finch to speculate in the Coeur d'Alene mining district. In 1890, the 45-year-old bachelor married a 31-year-old schoolteacher named Grace Fox, and the couple started their new life together in Wallace, Idaho. The following year, on October 14, 1891, Campbell, Finch, and Patsy Clark founded the incredibly lucrative Hecla Mining Company to extract silver from Idaho's Silver Valley. But, as with many tales of great wealth, it came with great danger. Campbell and his business partners formed associations to aggressively fight against organized labor, which led to violent and bitter union disputes. Amidst a terrifying backdrop of gunfire, deaths, and the explosion of a processing mill in 1892, a fearful Amasa sent his pregnant wife away to the safety of Spokane, where their only child, Helen, was born. Seeking permanent safety, he moved the family to Spokane and bought adjoining lots next to his partner, John Finch, in the elite Browne's Addition. In 1898, the family moved into the magnificent Campbell House, a beautiful English Tudor Revival mansion designed by the famed architect Kirtland Cutter. While Grace ran the household and entertained high-society ladies in her gilded French reception room, Amasa became a titan of the Spokane community. He invested heavily in nearly every successful business enterprise in the Inland Empire. He helped build the modern infrastructure of the city by backing the Washington Water Power Company, Traders National Bank, the Spokane and Eastern Trust Company, the Spokane International Railway, and the Spokane Southern Traction Company. Despite helping to bring Spokane into the modern age, Campbell interestingly despised the look of new technology in his own home; he went so far as to hide the mansion's only telephone behind a wooden panel near the door. He was also a man who kept his own secrets in the shadows. Although his wife Grace was a strict temperance supporter who banned alcohol in the house, Amasa kept a secret liquor cabinet tucked away in his basement game room near his fireproof safe. Amasa Campbell's life of opulent wealth and intense industry was ultimately cut short. In 1912, at the age of 67, he succumbed to throat cancer, dying as one of Spokane's wealthiest men. His grieving widow, Grace, mourned him deeply for two years before falling ill herself.