Monroe Street Bridge

The Monroe Street Bridge is an elegant 1911 arch bridge spanning the Spokane River gorge, offering some of the best views of the falls from any bridge in the city. The bridge's decorative lamp posts are topped with cast bison skulls — a memorial to the vast herds that once roamed the Inland Northwest and to the Indigenous hunters who used this canyon as a buffalo jump.

The bridge is a pedestrian and traffic crossing, so you can walk across easily from downtown. The views of the falls from the middle of the bridge, looking east toward the canyon, are worth the five-minute detour. The canyon walls below, carved from basalt laid down by ancient lava flows and shaped by the Missoula Floods, are dramatic.

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The four bison skulls that decorate the bridge's lamp posts were inspired by the actual bones found when the bridge was built in 1911. Workers excavating the canyon found thousands of bison skulls from an ancient buffalo jump — a place where Indigenous hunters had driven herds off the cliff edge for centuries. The bridge designer incorporated the skulls as ornaments to acknowledge the find. The original skulls were later moved to the State Historical Society; the current ones are replicas.

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