Spokane: A Brief Stop on the Northern Route

Mahmúd's Diary records that the westbound train carrying 'Abdu'l-Bahá's party stopped at the Spokane Great Northern Railway station for approximately thirty minutes during the westward leg of October 1912. The stop was a routine re-watering and crew change. It had not been listed as one of the Master's official appearances on the published itinerary.

1 / 8

The small Spokane community had, however, learned by telegram from friends in Minneapolis that the Master would pass through. A delegation of perhaps seven or eight believers came to the station with armfuls of flowers and waited on the platform. When the train pulled in, the Master Himself came down the parlour-car steps onto the platform to receive them.

2 / 8

The exchange was brief but warm. Mahmúd records that the Master walked the length of the platform with the small delegation, accepting the flowers, asking after each of the believers individually. He stopped before each one and addressed them by name where He could and by description where the name had not been given to Him.

3 / 8

A short impromptu address followed. The Master spoke standing on the open platform, before perhaps fifty travellers — not all of them Bahá'ís — who had paused to see what the gathering was about. He spoke briefly on the *spread of the divine teachings* into the new American territories, on the importance of the Pacific Northwest as a coming hub of the Cause, and on the duty of the believer to be, in his or her neighbourhood, a *fountain of mercy.*

4 / 8

The whistle of the train called Him back. He blessed the Spokane delegation, returned up the parlour-car steps, and the train pulled out westward. Mahmúd notes that several of the women on the platform stood weeping after the train had disappeared into the autumn dusk.

5 / 8

The party continued through the night across the Columbia River basin and the Cascade range, descending the following morning into the western maritime forests. The next major stop on the route was Seattle.

6 / 8

The Spokane gathering was small, the duration was brief, the words were few. But the friends, in later years, would remember the unscheduled platform meeting — the Master's deliberate descent from His private car onto their public station — as one of the formative encounters of the Pacific Northwest's small Bahá'í history.

7 / 8

*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for the Spokane stop, October 1912; see original for full text.*

8 / 8