(Photo courtesy of Washington State Digital Archives)

With summer supposedly here (Sunday night’s drenching around Olympia suggests otherwise), many of us will be looking for excuses to be outdoors and enjoy the warmer weather.

Whether you’re part of a couple, a family or a group of friends, a picnic in a park on a nice day is hard to beat. That was the case 100 years ago, as shown in the photo of a group picnicking at Manito Park in Spokane sometime during the 1910s.

The photo, located in our State Digital Archives,  is part of a collection of 123 glass lantern slides that shows the City of Spokane and Spokane Parks between 1900 and 1930. Images include Liberty Park, Manito Park, Cliff Park, Franklin Park, Glass Park, A. M. Cannon Playfield, Cannon Hill Park, Corbin Park, Hay’s Park, Bowl and Pitcher, Indian Canyon Park, Palisades Park, picnics, swimming pools, playgrounds, winter scenes, Native Americans, and the Spokane River. Most of these images were used in Spokane promotional literature and several appear in the Report of the Board of Park Commissioners, Spokane, Washington, 1891-1913.