Construction of St. Joseph Church began in 1891 and it was completed in 1892. It was a 24-by-40-foot wooden building. Cash donations for its construction were collected by Joseph Ulowetz. The land for the construction of the original church was donated by James McLaughlin but he didn’t live long enough to see the church get built. The first requiem mass was held for James McLaughlin in the unfinished structure. Father Barnabas Held was the first regular priest, serving from 1891 to 1897.

An adjacent piece of land was donated by Max Rauscher for the cemetery. The first burial in the cemetery was Permilia Rotchford. She was only 2 months old at the time of her death in 1891.

The church was destroyed by a fire in 1928. The original wooden building was replaced in 1929 with a brick structure that still sits on the site today.

Henry Arbes constructed the shrine on the hillside overlooking the cemetery by hand in 1956.

St. Joseph's cemetery is located on the north side of Trent Avenue in east Spokane.

St. Joseph Church was the first church built in the Spokane Valley. However, it was not the first church in the region. In 1881, the Congregationalists built their first church building at Sprague and Bernard in downtown Spokane. The region’s first Catholic church was brought about by Fr. Joseph Cataldo. He was Superior of the Jesuit’s Rocky Mountain Missions, and he converted a 15-by-22-foot carpenter shop into the Church of St. Joseph. It was located at the corner of Main and Bernard, also in downtown Spokane.