Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

George Thornton Emmons’s The Tahltan Indians serves as the foundational ethnographic monograph documenting the Tahltan Nation at the confluence of the Stikine and Tahltan rivers. Emmons documents traditional village architecture, obsidian weapon fabrication from Mount Edziza, salmon-harvesting methods, and ancestral governance. The study details the strategic trading monopoly maintained by the Tahltan, who controlled commerce between coastal Tlingit communities and interior Dene bands across trade corridors extending toward Dease Lake, Sheslay, and Bear Lake. Emmons provides an invaluable early baseline of Indigenous territorial integrity and social networks prior to extensive colonial encroachment.

120 pages, 19 plates : illustrations, map ; 27 cm

British Columbia's Sunshine Coast is a sublimely scenic 160-kilometre stretch of waterfront between Howe Sound and Desolation Sound, reached by a 40-minute ferry ride from West Vancouver. Join Howard White, award-winning humorist and lifelong coast denizen, on a guided tour from Gibsons, where the long-running TV series The Beachcombers was filmed, to Powell River, the largest community in the region. Along the way, sojourn in Roberts Creek, whose patron saint, the irrepressible Harry Roberts, invented the name "Sunshine Coast." Stop over in Sechelt, named for the Shi'sha'lh or Sechelt Nation who once occupied the bulk of the Sunshine Coast territory. Follow the seriously twisty highway to visit Pender Harbour, where some local fishing folk still do their Saturday shopping in kicker boats. Drop anchor in Princess Louisa Inlet, and discover why the likes of John Barrymore and Andrew Carnegie once came to marvel at its canyon-like splendour. With paintings by local artists, poems by local poets, tall tales by local characters, miracles by Sechelt medicine men, tips on predicting the weather, a fair share of risqué gossip about historical figures, a good mix of bold opinions and hard facts and over 150 beautiful colour photographs, The Sunshine Coast is a book to be treasured, not just by residents and visitors, but by anyone with an eye for fascinating places. First published in 1996, this fully revised edition contains updated text and all new photographs of coast life from the area's most talented photographers including Dean van't Schip and Keith Thirkell.

127 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 29 cm

The Sun Valley Story by Doreen Marsh Dorward is a locally published historical booklet that chronicles the development and charm of the iconic Sun Valley, Idaho resort area. Released through the author's own Ketchum-based photography studio, the work utilizes both original imagery and local history to capture the picturesque landscapes that transformed a remote mountain valley into a world-renowned destination. Ultimately, it serves as an intimate visual keepsake that preserves the pioneering heritage of America's first luxury winter sports resort.

32 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"The Summer Canada Burned tells the dramatic story of Canada's wildfires in 2023--a story that provides a case study of the changing climate and its impacts on our environment. It reflects evolving attitudes about approaches to wildfires and the role all people can play in prevention. Most importantly, however, the story of Canada's wildfires is a story of loss and of survival. From the ashes, people rise, communities rebuild and seeds of new growth sprout."-- Provided by publisher

183 pages : color illustrations ; 23 cm

The struggle for survival Indian cultures and the Protestant ethic in British Columbia examines the intense cultural collision and colonial administrative expansion situated across the deeply indented fjords and heavily forested coastal margins of the Canadian Pacific edge. LaViolette details how the region's formidable macro-geography—specifically the labyrinthine marine waterways, the dense, resource-rich temperate rainforests, and the steep, isolating mountainous topography—strictly dictated the margins of indigenous socio-economic networks and the subsequent imposition of European institutional control. By mapping the Canadian government's aggressive efforts to overlay a rigid, agrarian-based Protestant spatial order onto a terrain that had long supported complex, marine-harvesting indigenous societies, the narrative highlights how this specific coastal geography anchored the profound resistance to cultural and territorial displacement. Ultimately, this sociological record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the immense geographic isolation and rich marine abundance of this northern Pacific frontier fundamentally shaped the highly contested, terrain-dependent character of British Columbia's indigenous cultural survival.

xii, 201 pages : illustrations

This remarkable account of Washington’s Twana Indians contains the most complete body of information compiled on any Native American group in the southern coast Salish region.

576 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

David Dendy’s The Story of the Grey Canal: Water and the Making of the North Okanagan provides an indispensable historical geography and engineering study of the monumental irrigation network that transformed the arid benches surrounding Vernon. Dendy traces the construction of the fifty-kilometer gravity-fed ditch, flume, and siphon system between 1906 and 1914, which diverted water from Duteau Creek in the Monashee highlands to irrigate thousands of acres of semi-arid bunchgrass country. The work illustrates how access to controlled water engineered the transition from extensive cattle rangeland into productive, high-density fruit orchards across Coldstream, Vernon, Spallumcheen, Lavington, and the hills overlooking Okanagan Landing. Richly documented with construction blueprints and archival photographs, the book captures the critical role of corporate hydraulic engineering in shaping the regional landscape.

88 pages : illustrations, maps ; 28 cm

Jim McDowell’s The Story of Sidney Island's Three Names traces the cartographic, linguistic, and political evolution of a prominent landform in the southern Gulf Islands by examining the layered origins of its designations. The text illustrates how corporate traders and imperial hydrographers progressively superimposed colonial designations—first as "Sallas Island" under the Hudson's Bay Company and subsequently as "Sidney Island" via British Admiralty surveys—directly over the ancestral W̱SÁNEĆ (Saanich) territory and ancient harvesting shores of SḰŦÁMEN (Sktamaen). McDowell details the changing logistics of island access and resource extraction, showing how an Indigenous marine domain defined by reef net fisheries and seasonal harvesting was re-engineered through colonial property surveys to facilitate settler pre-emptions, steam navigation in Haro Strait, and industrial brick-making operations at Sidney Spit. Ultimately, this toponymic chronicle demonstrates how successive colonial renamings functioned as deliberate instruments of spatial control across the Salish Sea, superimposing imperial administrative authority onto an enduring Indigenous archipelago.

65 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 28 cm

Authored by Peter Grant, The Story of Sidney chronicles the evolution of the coastal town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, from its early Indigenous presence and 19th-century agricultural settlement into a vibrant modern community. The book details the establishment of local farms, the arrival of the railway, and the maritime connections that bridged the Saanich Peninsula to the broader Salish Sea region. Drawing on local archives, historical photographs, and personal accounts, the text highlights the community's persistent drive to balance commercial growth with small-town coastal character. A keen insight drawn from the work is how transportation revolutions dictate the very heartbeat of coastal towns; just as the transition from neighborhood steamships to the Swartz Bay ferry terminal radically reshaped Sidney's economic destiny, it proved that the survival of an island-adjacent community depends entirely on how successfully it manages its role as a regional gateway.

96 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Omar C. Spencer’s The Story of Sauvies Island chronicles the arduous pioneer colonization and massive hydrological subjugation of a profoundly volatile, flood-ravaged riverine delta trapped at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers. The narrative maps how the severe environmental realities of this unstable aquatic topography—defined by heavily saturated marshlands, violent seasonal inundations, and the massive, untamed kinetic energy of the Pacific Northwest’s primary arterial waterways—initially paralyzed permanent terrestrial settlement and dictated a highly precarious agrarian existence. By detailing the grueling transition from vulnerable, isolated fur-trading outposts and primitive, flood-swept dairy pastures to the explosive deployment of colossal earthen dikes and heavy mechanized pumping infrastructure, the text illustrates how the economic survival of the island was strictly governed by the urgent necessity to artificially blockade and master this massive riverine volume. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that systematically domesticating the violent tidal hydrology of the Columbia basin and violently engineering a robust, mechanized terrestrial fortress against relentless flooding were the absolute prerequisites for shattering the island's geographic vulnerability and transforming a saturated wetland into a highly integrated, industrial agricultural anchor of the Oregon territory.

134 pages illustrations, portraits, maps 22 cm

A fourth-grade textbook presenting the history, geography, resources, government, traditions, and ethnology of Idaho

257 pages : illustrations, maps ; 29 cm

Authored by Lucia W. Moore, Nina W. McCornack, and Gladys W. McCready, The Story of Eugene chronicles the founding and growth of Oregon’s third-largest city from its humble beginnings as a remote Willamette Valley settlement in the mid-19th century. The book draws on pioneer diaries, local records, and oral histories to trace the community's evolution from a muddy river crossing named after Eugene Skinner into a bustling agricultural and educational hub anchored by the University of Oregon. Through its detailed civic narrative, the text highlights the entrepreneurial drive and social institutions that transformed a fragile frontier outpost into a thriving urban center. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the intentional integration of higher education served as a vital urban survival strategy; by aggressively lobbying to secure the state university, early town leaders successfully insulated Eugene from the boom-and-bust cycles of purely resource-dependent timber and rail economies, cementing the city's long-term cultural and economic resilience.

277 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

This unique study investigates the effects of the long interaction between anthropologists and the Kwakwaka'wakw (or Kwakiutl) peoples of coastal British Columbia. Beginning with Franz Boas, anthropologists have written extensively about the rich material culture of the Kwakwaka'wakw and have long collected their intricately detailed storage boxes, totem poles, and elaborate ceremonial wear. But how did the relationship between these two groups contribute to transform both ordinary and ritual objects into ethnological specimens, and then to works of art proudly displayed in museums? This expansive books is an anthropology of anthropology. Ira Jacknis identifies not only the effects of cross-cultural exchanges but also examines anthropology itself as a cultural process. He considers as well how museums define and present Native art and how their choices in turn influence current Native artists. The book offers a valuable collection of 131 halftones, ranging from nineteenth-century ethnographic photographs to catalog images from the American Museum of Natural History to documentary photographs taken by Jacknis in the 1980s. Together with Jacknis's close account of this classic chapter in anthropological history, they vividly show how the "anthropological encounter" is in fact an extraordinarily complex and fluid relationship.

xvi, 463 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Published in 2007 by Irene Sargo, Harriet Morehead, and Elizabeth Gans—known as the Buckner sisters—The Stehekin We Remember offers an intimate, firsthand chronicle of pioneer life in the isolated Stehekin Valley at the head of Lake Chelan during the 1920s through the 1940s. The book blends family memoirs, historic photographs, and detailed genealogical maps to document the daily routines of self-sufficient homesteading, one-room schoolhouses, and orchard management without modern amenities. Alongside their own family history, the authors meticulously record the profiles of neighboring pioneer households, preserving a comprehensive social fabric of the valley. A keen insight drawn from the text is how it highlights the duality of isolation; while geographic remoteness imposed severe physical hardships and labor-intensive survival strategies on children growing up in the North Cascades, it simultaneously fostered a remarkably resilient, hyper-collaborative community network that deeply anchored their collective identity.

203 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Roland Carey’s The Steamboat Landing on Elliott Bay chronicles the rapid maritime and commercial evolution of Seattle's waterfront during the bustling era of the Puget Sound mosquito fleet. The narrative maps the strategic, deep-water topography of Elliott Bay, detailing how early pioneer infrastructure was precariously wedged between expansive, tide-swept mudflats and the steep, heavily forested bluffs of the coastal mainland. By illustrating how the dense, impenetrable inland rainforests effectively strangled early attempts at overland transit, the book demonstrates that the region's scattered resource camps and agricultural settlements were forced to rely entirely on this centralized marine nexus for survival and economic integration. The text highlights the chaotic, dynamic environment of the sprawling wooden wharves extending over the tidal zones, where shallow-draft steamers systematically conquered the restrictive, current-swept corridors of the inland sea to deliver vital freight and passengers. Ultimately, the account captures the defining physical constraints of early Seattle, demonstrating how capitalizing on its protected oceanic anchorage and mastering the surrounding aquatic highways transformed an isolated, mud-bound timber outpost into the dominant maritime terminus of the Pacific Northwest.

66 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm

224 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Published in 2017 by Bernita Tickner and Gail L. Fiorini-Jenner, The State of Jefferson explores the colorful, enduring political secession movement aimed at carving a new U.S. state out of the rugged rural counties of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Through a rich collection of vintage photographs and historical anecdotes, the book traces the movement from its 1941 theatrical launch—complete with gold-panning miners brandishing rifles—to its modern manifestations rooted in geographic isolation and anti-establishment sentiment. The text details how residents of this timber-and-mining corridor have long felt economically and politically abandoned by distant state capitals in Sacramento and Salem. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the persistent mythos of the "State of Jefferson" functions less as a viable legislative blueprint and more as a profound psychological safety valve; it provides rural populations with a shared, defiant regional identity that channels deep-seated economic grievances against metropolitan dominance into theatrical civic rebellion.

128 pages : chiefly illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

The Stanwood story Volume Two chronicles the grueling agricultural reclamation and isolated pioneer settlement situated at the marshy, flood-prone delta of the Stillaguamish River in northwestern Washington. Essex details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the dense, impenetrable coastal tidelands, the unpredictable, violent winter flooding of the meandering Stillaguamish, and the heavily timbered, waterlogged soils of the valley floor—strictly dictated the margins of early human survival and agrarian expansion. By mapping the immense physical labor required to construct massive earthen dikes against the intruding saline tides of Port Susan and to painstakingly extract deep-rooted old-growth cedar stumps from the damp earth, the narrative highlights the monumental cooperative effort necessary to forcibly convert this dense estuarine environment into highly productive agricultural and commercial tracts. The initial geographic isolation from deeper marine anchorages forced these remote riverine homesteads into a strict reliance on the shallow-draft navigation of the river estuary, completely anchoring their physical survival and early timber economy to the severe hydrological realities of the delta and the precise tidal rhythms of Puget Sound. Ultimately, this civic and historical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the extreme estuarine geography, heavy maritime precipitation, and immense physical labor of this Pacific Northwest frontier fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, tightly knit, and strictly riverine-dependent character of the Stanwood settlement.

volumes illustrations 28 cm

Compiled by local historian Florence Boutwell, The Spokane Valley chronicles the rapid transformation of Washington's inland plateau from an arid, pine-studded expanse into a flourishing agricultural and suburban community. Drawing on historical photographs, diaries, and local records, the book details the arrival of early homesteaders, the expansion of the Northern Pacific Railway, and the monumental irrigation efforts that turned the valley into a patchwork of prolific apple orchards and dairy farms. The text captures the close-knit social fabric of small pioneer settlements like Dishman, Millwood, and Opportunity as they gradually yielded to suburban expansion. A keen insight drawn from the work is how suburbanization in the Inland Empire inverted traditional migration patterns; unlike coastal regions where cities pushed outward, the Spokane Valley's agricultural hubs were explicitly established along irrigation canals first, forming rural clusters that later coalesced into a modern bedroom community.

3 volumes : illustrations, maps (1 folded) ; 29 cm

"From Lake Coeur d Alene to its confluence with the Columbia, the Spokane River travels 111 miles of varied and often spectacular terrain rural, urban, in places wild. The river has been a trading and gathering place for Native peoples for thousands of years. With bountiful trout, accessible swimming holes, and challenging rapids it is a recreational mecca for residents and tourists alike. The Spokane also bears the legacy of industrial growth and remains caught amid interests competing over natural resources."--Google books viewed Jan. 14, 2021

1 online resource (283 pages)

The Spokane Indians children of the sun examines the complex indigenous seasonal subsistence, shifting tribal diplomacy, and subsequent forced reservation confinement situated across the sprawling, semi-arid macro-geography of eastern Washington's Columbia Plateau. Ruby, Brown, and Bennett detail how the region's formidable interior topography—specifically the deeply incised, fast-flowing chasms of the Spokane River, the vast, sun-baked expanses of the bunchgrass steppe, and the vital, immense salmon fisheries at Spokane Falls—strictly dictated the margins of indigenous seasonal migrations, centralized trade networks, and later, aggressive Euro-American agricultural encroachment. By mapping the Spokane people's profound adaptation to this riverine and plateau environment—where the vital aquatic resources of the falls and the rich root-gathering grounds of the plains sustained a highly mobile, equestrian culture that was ultimately fractured by arbitrary colonial boundaries and the destruction of the river ecology—the narrative highlights how this specific riparian and arid geography anchored a profoundly resilient, river-centric indigenous society. Ultimately, this ethnohistorical record serves as a localized spatial history, demonstrating how the vital hydrological focal points, expansive arid plateau, and severe ecological transformations of this inland Pacific Northwest landscape fundamentally shaped the highly adaptable, culturally enduring character of the Spokane people.

xx, 346 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm

Graeme Pole’s The Spiral Tunnels and the Big Hill on the Canadian Pacific Railway provides a detailed spatial and mechanical chronicle of the railway engineering corridor anchoring the mountain village of Field in the Kicking Horse River valley. Pole recounts the construction and harrowing operation of the infamous "Big Hill"—a temporary 4.5 percent rail grade dropped down from Kicking Horse Pass into Field in 1884 that resulted in frequent runaway trains and fatal derailments. The volume documents the transformative 1909 construction of the Spiral Tunnels through Cathedral Mountain and Mount Ogden, which reduced the grade to a manageable 2.2 percent. The narrative illuminates the daily civic and operational rhythms of Field as a dedicated locomotive pusher depot and terminal servicing the rugged Yoho Valley and the Kicking Horse canyon corridor.

80 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 23 cm

Roland Carey’s The Sound of Steamers chronicles the transformative nineteenth-century maritime evolution that physically interconnected the sprawling, fragmented waterways of Washington's Puget Sound. The narrative maps the region's complex estuarine geography, demonstrating how deep, current-swept channels, unpredictable tidal rips, and dense, impassable coastal rainforests initially isolated early pioneer settlements from one another. By detailing the introduction of robust side-wheelers and shallow-draft steamboats, Carey illustrates how this mechanized technology allowed early mariners to finally conquer the restrictive ocean winds and severe tides that had historically crippled sailing vessels. The book traces the resulting aquatic highways that reliably linked sheltered lumber ports like Seattle and Tacoma to remote island homesteads and northern gold rush outposts along the Fraser River. Ultimately, the text captures the vital marine geography of the inland Pacific Northwest, highlighting how mastering this formidable aquatic basin through steam power was the absolute prerequisite for the region's economic and cultural unification.

109 pages : illustrations, facsimile, portraits ; 29 cm

The sound and the mountain examines the vital "mosquito fleet" steamboat network and early coastal community survival situated across the sprawling, deeply carved macro-geography of Washington's Puget Sound. Carey details how the region's formidable maritime topography—specifically the labyrinthine, deep-water fjords of the inland sea, the towering, impenetrable volcanic backdrop of the Cascade Range, and the dense, heavily timbered shorelines that precluded overland travel—strictly dictated the margins of pioneer mobility, isolated homesteading, and intense regional commerce. By mapping the daily operation of these scattered coastal enclaves, which relied entirely on a complex web of steam-powered vessels traversing the sound's sheltered corridors to function as the region's only viable highway system, the narrative highlights how this specific archipelagic geography anchored a profoundly interconnected, water-bound society. Ultimately, this maritime and historical record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the severe overland barricades, critical navigable deep-water channels, and isolating coastal shorelines of this Pacific Northwest landscape fundamentally shaped the highly mobile, maritime-dependent character of the early Puget Sound frontier.

110, [13] pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

This history tells of the native people and of the first settlers - and with some anecdotal quotes, condenses the years of development of community, industry and culture into these pages. Anyone who has lived for any length of time in the Sooke area or whose family were participants in the early years of its growth will find this book of great interest." - Introduction

433 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm