Fort Spokane was a U.S. Army fort from 1880-1898, an Indian boarding school from 1900-1907, and later a hospital and offices before it was abandoned in 1929. It was built to separate settlers to the south from reservation lands to the north, on a flat plain suitable for an organized fort complex, with a reliable spring, nearby timber, and road access to the railroad for supplies. The fort had 45 principle buildings and at times as many as 400 people lived there, including 300 soldiers and 100 civilians who supported daily operations. Soldiers' lives were usually routine rather than heroic, with marching, drilling, target practice, and construction filling their days, while hunting, fishing, swimming, and visiting the brewery were common diversions. The post saw almost no action, and soldiers spent most of their time defending local tribes from encroaching settlers who sought to poach game, mine, or build homes illegally on reservations. Founded in 1900, Fort Spokane Indian Boarding School was one of almost 150 such schools in the United States and carried out a federal policy of coerced assimilation of Native American children. Children from the nearby Spokane and Colville reservations, some as young as five, were taken from their homes, forced to attend for nine months, and kept from their families in an effort to strip them of their native culture; the memories and scars of that experience still resonate in Native American communities. After the government abandoned the fort, most buildings were dismantled during the Great Depression and World War II for use as building materials in local homes, and in the 1960s the grounds were transferred to the National Park Service and the four remaining buildings were restored.