parallel; thence west on said parallel to the Columbia Guide Meridian: thence south (n said meridian to the 4th standard parallel: thence west on the 4th standard parallel to the range line between ranges 27 and 28; thence south on said range line to the section line between sections 24 and 25 in township 14 north, range 27 east; thence west to the place of beginning." W. C. Gray, John H. Wells, and Andrew Lafevre were appointed commissioners with directions to provide for a special election for county officers to be held on the second Monday in December. The seat was located at Spokane Falls, but the people were given authority to change the location by majority vote at the next general election. Provision was made for revenue for the new county, and for a continuation until otherwise provided of all acts of a local nature then in force in the county of Stevens. The town of Cheney was for a few years the seat of Spokane County.
These two counties of Spokane and Stevens, and for sixteen years the one county of Stevens, 1864 to 1880, have been carved by the legislature into, at this writing, ten counties, namely: Chelan, Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, Spokane, Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, Franklin, and Whitman. Their combined area is 28,548 square miles. Their population in 1900 was 125,848. Other counties will be formed hereafter from the ten, and the inhabitants will increase indefinitely in number as time rolls on. As the reduced Spokane is today it is of 1,777 square miles, and the reduced Stevens 3,945 square miles. Their combined population, as both counties are increasing in this way very rapidly, is probably not far from 100,000. The statements immediately foregoing relate only to that portion of the two counties within the present limits of the State of Washington. Spokane County, as created in 1858, extended east to the summits of the Rocky Mountains, and included an area now in Idaho and Montana greater than that in Washington, and which, also, is cut up into a number of counties and occupied by many thousands of citizens.
