Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

Small towns punctuate the landscape of Oregon and Washington. They burrow in crinkles of hills, sit alongside mighty rivers, survive in desert canyons and sagebrush plains, dot the fertile Willamette Valley, and perch at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. In Discovering Main Street, Foster Church reveals the unexpected and unique pleasures of exploring small towns, what he calls “the last frontier of American tourism.” Organized by region—Willamette Valley, Oregon Coast, Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon, and Southern Washington—the profiles in Discovering Main Street begin with route tips and end with comments on where to stay and eat. Church’s engaging narratives provide history, highlights, and insights into each of the nearly fifty profiled communities. A useful introduction summarizes Church’s recommendations for a small town visit, which include hanging out at the local cafe, attending a school sports event, and hiking the surroundings—because without exception, small towns in the Northwest are set in hauntingly beautiful environments, from stark deserts to deep, mossy forests. Discovering Main Street provides an alternative to the outdoor adventure guides that dominate bookshelves in the Northwest. It will appeal to armchair travelers, to Northwest enthusiasts, and to any curious explorers seeking adventure in hidden—and unexpected—places.

192 pages : maps ; 22 cm

There is an otherness to the high desert, something momentous and sacred in the purity of the silence. In this compelling collection of personal essays, award-winning poet and author Ellen Waterston illuminates the people, places, and landscape of Central Oregon’s vast high desert. In Where the Crooked River Rises, Waterston reveals the blessings and challenges of decades spent as a rancher and town resident in a place that “has been, and remains,” her touchstone and crucible. The high desert is Waterston’s teacher, and she describes its lessons with grace and care, inviting readers to look at their own lives through a lens of wide-open spaces, sagebrush and juniper, pumice and rabbit brush.

142 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Stephen Vogler’s Only in Whistler: Tales of a Mountain Town examines the cultural, architectural, and geographic evolution of the modern resort municipality anchored beneath Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. Vogler chronicles the transformation of an isolated countercultural enclave of ski bums, squatters, and back-to-the-land builders into an ultra-modern corporate resort destination. The narrative documents the engineering of high-speed lift infrastructure, the consolidation of Blackcomb and Whistler mountains, and the development of the purpose-built, pedestrianized Whistler Village. Vogler traces the tension between grassroots community identity and speculative real estate development across neighbourhoods such as Creekside, Alpine Meadows, and Cheakamus, capturing the social and economic adaptations required to stage international alpine sporting events culminating in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

240 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm

The Columbia County Historical Society’s Columbia County, Oregon provides an archival photographic and spatial record of the lower Columbia River shorelines and interior Nehalem Valley timberlands. The narrative documents how nineteenth-century logging camps, river landings, and agricultural clearings were established across lands traditionally stewarded by the Multnomah and Clatskanie Chinookan peoples. The volume details the rise of the historic river ports of Saint Helens, Columbia City, Prescott, Rainier, and Goble, examining their transition from steamship fuel docks into industrialized sawmill and papermaking centers. Detailed photo essays record early railroad corridors, school districts, and community hubs spanning Scappoose, Warren, Deer Island, Yankton, Apiary, and the interior logging communities of Vernonia and Mist.

128 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm

In 1887, more than 30 Chinese gold miners were massacred on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. Massacred for Gold, the first authoritative account of the unsolved crime—one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West—unearths the evidence that points to an improbable gang of rustlers and schoolboys, one only 15, as the killers. The crime was discovered weeks after it happened, but no charges were brought for nearly a year, when gang member Frank Vaughan, son of a well-known settler family, confessed and turned state’s evidence. Six men and boys, all from northeastern Oregon’s remote Wallowa country, were charged—but three fled, and the others were found innocent by a jury that a witness admitted had little interest in convicting anyone. A cover-up followed, and the crime was all but forgotten for the next 100 years, until a county clerk found hidden records in an unused safe. In bringing this story out of the shadows, Nokes examines the once-substantial presence of Chinese laborers in the interior Pacific Northwest, describing why they came, how their efforts contributed to the region’s development, and how too often mistreatment and abuse were their only reward.

208 pages : illustrations, map, portraits ; 23 cm

Working with Roche Harbor archivists as well as owners of private photo collections, Walker has selected more than 200 images and written text to illustrate the visual history of Roche Harbor and the people who have lived there

127 pages : chiefly illustrations ; 24 cm.

Friday Harbor, Washington was incorporated in 1909. As with many of the young state's small port towns, timber, salmon fishing, and farming fueled Friday Harbor's early economy. Life slowed and some left, but in being passed--until tourism caught on in the late 1970s--the town (and island) developed a unique sense of community that survives to this day

127 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm.

In 1909 Captain John T. Walbran published one of the most beloved and enduring of all BC books, British Columbia Coast Names. Harbour Publishing celebrates the hundredth anniversary of that landmark work by presenting the first book to update Walbran's classic, Andrew Scott's Raincoast Place Names. Like its progenitor, Raincoast Place Names is much more than simply a catalogue of name origins because it tells the often fascinating stories behind the names and in so doing serves as a history of the region in capsule form. It is also a monumental work, twice the size of Walbran's and including more than three times as many places. Four thousand entries consider, in intriguing detail, the stories behind over five thousand place names: how they were discovered, who named them and why, and what the names reveal. It describes the original First Nations cultures, the heroics of the 18th-century explorers and fur traders, the gruelling survey and settlement efforts of the 19th century, the lives of colonial officials, missionaries, gold seekers and homesteaders, and the histories of nearly every important vessel to sail or cruise the coast.

661 pages : illustrations (some color), maps, portraits ; 26 cm

The Cowichan Region is the large area that lies between the cities of Victoria and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, reaching from the protected eastern shores of the island nearly all the way west to the Pacific Ocean. Its cornucopia-like shape is fitting for a place of such remarkable bounty, and this area is home to a growing number of newcomers seeking its pleasant climate, recreational activities and culinary delights. Sometimes referred to as Canada's Provence, the name Cowichan is derived from a Coast Salish word meaning "warm land" or "basking in the sun."

143 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), maps, portraits ; 29 cm

Describes 125 hiking trails in the Central Cascades in Washington state, including detailed route descriptions, information on camping options, flora, fauna, historical trails, photographs, and maps. With some of the largest tracts of wilderness to be found in the Pacific Northwest, the Central Cascades are packed with wildlife, geological diversity, and opportunity for adventure. Using US Highway 2 as its primary organizing principle, this second edition of Day Hiking Central Cascades focuses on the best day hikes to be found between the Sultan Basin and Wenatchee, and around Blewett Pass, Chelan, and the Stehekin and Entiat River Valleys.

355 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 18 cm

For well over a century, the bright seas of the Sunshine Coast have been attracting visitors to the waterfront resorts, fishing lodges and beaches that rest between Howe Sound and the spectacular Princess Louisa Inlet. These coastal hotspots and communities were settled by a few courageous and daring pioneers whose names are still familiar today: Gibsons, Roberts, Whitaker, Donley, Silvey, Griffiths. Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits tells the stories of the homesteaders, loggers, prospectors and fishermen who carved out a living on the treacherous mountainside that rises straight out of the inlets. These men and women came with nothing in their pockets and founded logging empires, shingle mills and sawmills, launched fish canneries, a glue factory and even a well-known jam factory, and scaled the mountainsides to start copper and gold mines. They travelled and traded by boat, long before coastal roads were built in the 1950s, and their pioneering spirits still ride the bright seas of the Sunshine Coast today.

245 p. : ill., map, ports. ; 23 cm.

A Bridge Back, The Early Days of Florence, Oregon is an entertaining romp into the early history of a rollicking town, at once "wild west" and "gentle natured." It was a small town with a big heart and many colorful characters. They followed in the footsteps of greatness, on the trail of Lewis and Clark, Jedediah Smith and in the shadow of railroad barons and spruce-winged airplanes. Meet the adventuresome dreamer-founder and his bandito-turned-poet brother; meet the bold editor of the town paper, who went on to be a senator; meet the brave settler who saved a wagon master from mob attack; meet the lovely Rhododendron Queen who married the founder's nephew; meet the fishermen who blew up bombs in the river and the young man who sauntered nude down the beach; meet the greedy publisher who sided with grasping barons to his own downfall; and meet the bumbling Romeo who snapped a photo of his girl as she sank in quicksand. If you know Florence, you will never see her the same way again. If you do not know Florence, prepare to fall in love. A project of Merchants of Old Town Florence for the 150th Anniversary of Oregon.

110 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

With this attractive and easy-to-use guide in hand you’ll discover the Oregon you never knew existed. Nine maps and thirteen black-and-white illustrations help you become acquainted with this unknown Oregon.

x, 261 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Through ten people, Pedersen tells the stories of 10 different places. The names are recognizable to many: Ranger Rick Blank at Deception Pass State Park, Roger Sherman on Central Whidbey, and Elliott Menasche, an authority on South Whidbey State Park, for example. In simple feature stories he smoothly describes the places and the people who treasure them. It’s an easy read, but surprisingly informative even for long-time islanders. You may not have known, for example, that the oldest tree on the island, located in Deception Pass State Park, recently celebrated its 860th birthday.

63 pages : color illustrations, color map ; 22 x 28 cm

Frances Barkley was the first European woman to set foot on the coast of B.C. In 1786, she embarked from Europe on a trade and exploration voyage with her husband, Captain Charles W. Barkley. Her reminiscences contain her descriptions of their life at sea, and visits to S. American, India, China, and what is now known as Alaska and B.C

xv, 207 p. : ill., ports., maps ; 23 cm.

Published in 2009, Charles Hou’s The HBC Fur Brigade-First Nations Trail of 1848-49 examines the historic development and geography of the Hudson's Bay Company's vital trade route connecting the interior of British Columbia to the Pacific coast. The illustrated account details how chief trader Alexander Caulfield Anderson and company men mapped out new pathways between Fort Kamloops and Fort Langley to bypass the treacherous, impassable canyons of the lower Fraser River. Drawing heavily on archival records, the book maps the physical layout of these pack-horse routes and the immense logistical challenges required to sustain them. A keen insight drawn from the text is how it powerfully subverts the traditional corporate narrative of the fur trade; by foregrounding the indispensable geographic knowledge and guidance provided by local First Nations, Hou reveals that the survival and success of these imperial commercial arteries relied entirely on indigenous expertise rather than autonomous European exploration.

32 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 22 cm.

Backcountry Roads- Idaho is a beautiful, informative and practical guide to the Gem State's hidden treasure of roadways. Enhanced by 140 photos from award-winning photographer Leland Howard, Backcountry Roads-Idaho is a rarity, a guidebook that is also a work of art. Award-winning outdoor writer Lynna Howard provides GPS coordinates, expedition maps, and detailed descriptions for would be explorers. Her creative flair brings backcountry travel to life with an immediacy that engages all the senses. This is an indispensable tool for anyone who wishes to experience firsthand the rugged beauty of scenic Idaho

240 pages : color illustrations, color maps ; 22 x 28 cm

The Victorians who settled the Oregon Territory were adept at keeping immoral or bad behavior a secret. Goeres-Gardner uncovers the secret past of abuse, neglect, and double standards that existed for women criminals. Discover what drove proper Victorian women to murder. You ll learn about women s trials and their all-male jurors and the horrid conditions they faced in all-male prisons.

xix, 199 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"Follows the Wilkes Expedition in 1841. Includes the journals of Charles Wilkes and ten of his crewmen, eighteen of the Wilkes Expedition's charts (the quality of which reflects the crew's careful attention to accuracy), and a complete muster list of the officers and crewmen (name, title, and a brief synopsis of his activity within the expedition"--Provided by publisher

v, 314 pages : maps ; 23 cm

June 14, 1903, was a typical, hot Sunday in Heppner, a small farm town in northeastern Oregon. People went to church, ate dinner, and relaxed with family and friends. But late that afternoon, calamity struck when a violent thunderstorm brought heavy rain and hail to the mountains and bare hills south of town. When the fierce downpour reached Heppner, people gathered their children and hurried inside. Most everyone closed their doors and windows against the racket. The thunder and pounding hail masked the sound of something they likely could not have imagined: a roaring, two-story wall of water raging toward town. Within an hour, one of every five people in the prosperous town of 1,300 would lose their lives as the floodwaters pulled apart and carried away nearly everything in their path. The center of town was devastated. Enormous drifts of debris, tangled around bodies, snaked down the valley. The telegraph was down, the railroads were out, and the mayor was in Portland. Stunned survivors bent immediately to the dreadful tasks of searching for loved ones and carrying bodies to a makeshift morgue in the bank. By the next afternoon, thousands of individuals and communities had rushed to the town's aid, an outpouring of generosity that enabled the self-reliant citizens of Heppner to undertake the town's recovery. In Calamity, Joann Green Byrd, a native of eastern Oregon, carefully documents this poignant story, illustrating that even the smallest acts have consequences - good or bad. She draws on a wealth of primary sources, including a moving collection of photographs, to paint a rare picture of how a small town in the West coped with disaster at the turn of the twentieth century.

xviii, 202 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

For those who experienced it, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was a time of wonder in a "citadel set in stars" -- a grand world's fair that transformed the summer of 1909 in Seattle into a whirl of excitement and pleasure. On what would become the University of Washington campus, for a brief moment a huge city emerged. At noon on June 1, amidst the blasting of horns and whistles, confetti filled the air and the gates were opened to a pent-up crowd of about 80,000 fairgoers. At the end of the evening on October 16, the fair was over and the magical city became a memory for its 3.7 million visitors. For those who couldn't make the trip to see the exhibits and for the rest of us today, the best record of the event was made by Frank H. Nowell, official photographer for the exposition. He documented the construction of the city, its landscaping, the people who built it, and the people who visited it, as well as the buildings that housed displays from dozens of foreign countries. He used a large view camera and 8 x 10 glass-plate negatives to create several thousand photographs. For this book, Nicolette Bromberg has chosen the best and most representative. Her essay illuminates both the man and the fair, providing perspective to a history of the West that connects us to a world-expanding event a hundred years ago, and also contains Nowell's photographs of Alaska during the gold rush, relating how an Alaskan photographer became the official A-Y-P photographer. For the 100th anniversary of the exposition, John Stamets organized and led University of Washington students in a project to rephotograph the site. This book includes an essay by Stamets describing the challenges, delights, and problems of the project, along with thirty rephotographs that imagine the fabulously spectacular ghost city on the campus.

128 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

Ordered to join the Pacific Squadron in 1854, the sloop of war Decatur sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, through the Strait of Magellan to Valparaiso, Honolulu, and Puget Sound, then on to San Francisco, Panama, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, while serving in the Pacific until 1859, the eve of the Civil War. Historian Lorraine McConaghy presents the ship, its officers, and its crew in a vigorous, keenly rendered case study that illuminates the forces shaping America's antebellum navy and foreign policy in the Pacific, from Vancouver Island to Tierra del Fuego. One of only five ships in the squadron, the Decatur participated in numerous imperial adventures in the Far West, enforcing treaties, fighting Indians, suppressing vigilantes, and protecting commerce. With its graceful lines and towering white canvas sails, the ship patrolled the sandy border between ocean and land. Warship under Sail focuses on four episodes in the Decatur's Pacific Squadron mission: the harrowing journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan; a Seattle war story that contested American treaties and settlements; participation with other squadron ships on a U.S. State Department mission to Nicaragua; and more than a year spent anchored off Panama as a hospital ship. In a period of five years, more than 300 men lived aboard ship, leaving a rich record of logbooks, medical and punishment records, correspondence, personal journals, and drawings. Lorraine McConaghy has mined these records to offer a compelling social history of a warship under sail. Her research adds immeasurably to our understanding of the lives of ordinary men at sea and American expansionism in the antebellum Pacific West.

xi, 381 pages : illustrations, maps ; 27 cm.

It all began when architect Daniel, then a bachelor, built his own house on a wild hillside lot, developing his garden as next-door-neighbor, Ann, was developing a garden around natural springs in her backyard. We married, and together with our growing son, Benjamin, continued these gardens as we also fought through blackberries, horsetails, and morning glories to push intersecting paths through the adjacent two-lot wilderness we later purchased, creating a little park which we planted and nurtured and ultimately gave to the City of Seattle in 1996, with our promise to maintain it through our lifetimes. This richly illustrated book offers timely inspiration to gardeners in an increasingly urban world. In an engaging narrative, the Streissguths show the emergence of their gardening partnership during forty years of marriage, and their philosophy that developing a site along a public stairway gave them the opportunity to share their garden with neighbors and passersby. They offer practical insight into concepts of linking inside and outside rooms and of combining private and public spaces, and they describe the process through which they transformed a steep forested hillside in the heart of Seattle into a deciduous woodland garden with banks of perennials, a dell, vistas of the city and lake, and a site for ornamental and food-producing plants. Finally, they consider the future stewardship of the Streissguth Gardens, a park linking the wild and tamed sections of a unique greenbelt garden shared with joggers, strollers, fellow gardeners, schoolchildren, and those who call it “a touch of Eden in a big city.”

118 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 26 cm

Julie Whitesel Weston left her hometown of Kellogg, Idaho, but eventually it pulled her back. Only when she returned to this mining community in the Idaho Panhandle did she begin to see the paradoxes of the place where she grew up. Her book combines oral history, journalistic investigation, and personal reminiscence to take a fond but hard look at life in Kellogg during "the good times." Kellogg in the late 1940s and fifties was a typical American small town complete with high school football and basketball teams, marching band, and anti-Communist clubs; yet its bars, gambling dens, and brothels were entrenched holdovers from a rowdier frontier past. The Bunker Hill Mining Company, the largest employer, paid miners good wages for difficult, dangerous work, while the quest for lead, silver, and zinc denuded the mountainsides and laced the soil and water with contaminants. Weston researched the late-nineteenth-century founding of Kellogg and her family's five generations in Idaho. She interviewed friends she grew up with, their parents, and her own parents' friends--miners mostly, but also businesspeople, housewives, and professionals. Much of this memoir of place set during the Cold War and post-McCarthyism is told through their voices. But Weston also considers how certain people made a difference in her life, especially her band director, her ski coach, and an attorney she worked for during a major strike. She also explores her charged relationship with her father, a hardworking doctor revered in the community for his dedication but feared at home for his drinking and rages. The Good Times Are All Gone Now begins the day the smokestacks came down, and it reaches far back into collective and personal memory to understand a way of life now gone. The company town Weston knew is a different place, where "Uncle Bunker" is a Superfund site, and where the townspeople, as in previous hard times, have endured to reinvent Kellogg--not once, but twice

xv, 231 pages : illustrations, photographs ; 22 cm

Accompanying CD contains ... "over 9,500 accompanying sound files

lxviii, 492 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 26 cm + 1 audio disc (digital, MP3 file ; 4 3/4 in.)