History Doesn’t Coast: Spokane, Washington

The Golden Flyer II arrived in Spokane and wouldn’t start.

Three cranks. Nothing. For the first time since the Tour launched on March 1st, the engine stayed silent. For a lesser crew, that might have been a problem. For this one — a team that has driven deserts, navigated mountain passes, and collected signatures in wind and rain across 25 states — it was simply the next thing to handle.

So Alice grabbed the wheel. Nell got behind the car and pushed. And the Golden Flyer II rolled — slowly, deliberately, under human power — three city blocks through downtown Spokane to the steps of the historic Davenport Hotel, where Mayor Lisa Brown, three members of the City Council, and a gathering of local advocates were waiting.

It was, as moments go, almost too perfect. Alice Burke and Nell Richardson spent months in 1916 pushing, pulling, and coaxing their Saxon roadster across roads that barely existed. A century later, their successors did the same — and arrived right on time.

The choice of venue was not incidental. The Davenport Hotel — opened in 1914 and one of the great landmarks of the Pacific Northwest — was the very same hotel where Alice Burke and Nell Richardson stayed during their original 10,000-mile suffrage drive in 1916. Returning to those same steps with the same type of automobile, more than a century later, created an emotional reunion with history that stopped passersby in their tracks.

Commuters paused. Hotel guests came outside. Downtown workers stopped to photograph the Golden Flyer II. It was exactly the strategy Alice and Nell used in 1916 — using the spectacle of a bright, improbable touring car to spark conversations about women’s rights, civic participation, and equality under the law. Some things do not change.

Mayor Lisa Brown — a longtime advocate for equality and public service who previously served as Washington State Senate Majority Leader — joined the Tour to recognize Spokane’s role in the continuing struggle for constitutional equality. She brought with her a data point that stopped the room.

In 1980, as the ERA was being fought in state legislatures across the country, women earned 59 cents for every dollar paid to men. Forty-five years of organizing, advocacy, and hard-won progress moved that number — slowly — to about 81 cents. But the trend is now reversing. The gender wage gap is widening again. In 2026, the median annual earnings gap between men and women has grown to $14,300 — translating, over a 40-year career, to more than $1 million in lifetime earnings lost by women compared to men. For women of color, the gap is wider still.

This is not an abstraction. It is the lived reality of women in Spokane, in Washington, and across the country — and it is precisely why the Equal Rights Amendment is not a relic of the 1970s. It is the unfinished business of right now.

Mayor Brown was joined by City Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Members Kate Telis and Kitty Klitzke — a council that has, notably, reached gender parity, with women serving as both Mayor and Council President. Council President Wilkerson, whose career has been shaped by service to women in her community — including leadership of the Women Helping Women Fund and the Junior League of Spokane — put it directly:

Kate Telis, the newest member of the Council, brought fresh energy to the gathering. Her presence — alongside a mayor, a council president, and a fellow council member, all women — was itself a demonstration of what representation looks like when the barriers come down.

The Spokane stop became both a commemoration of the past and a call to action for the future. Standing once again before the Davenport Hotel — where Alice and Nell slept in 1916 after crossing the mountains — the Tour connected that historic fight for the vote directly to today’s movement for the 28th Amendment.

The Golden Flyer II needed a push to get here. So has every advance in women’s rights. That’s never been a reason to stop.