50 years ago in Expo history: Spokane’s iconic Garbage Goat started out as a different design, as detailed in an S-R article

The Spokane City Council approved plans for what it called a “Goat Grotto” on the Expo ’74 grounds.

This was defined as “an installation of a figure in the form of goat, which would electrically say, ‘Feed me.’ ”

It was intended as a “receptacle for candy wrappers, picnic cups and many other forms of debris.”

“It’s a gimmick many parks departments use,” the city manager said. “It encourages youngsters to scamper around the park, looking for debris, just to hear the goat say something.”

The Goat Grotto eventually took a different form.

This concept evolved into what we know today as Riverfront Park’s famous Garbage Goat. It did not talk to kids, but it did something even better. It sucked trash into its mouth with help from an internal vacuum. It was created by Sister Paula Mary Turnbull and is one of Spokane’s signature icons, still beloved by children (and lots of adults) 50 years later.

From 100 years ago: Joe Cress, the Appleway tailor who disappeared after the Rosalia bank robbery, was arrested in Oakland after two months on the lam.

A Spokane police detective had learned that Cress was in California and wired Oakland authorities, who nabbed him.

Police began searching for Cress after they found letters addressed to him in a car that the robbers had crashed and abandoned. Police monitored his Spokane-area home and business, but he never returned.