Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

xii, 188, [3] pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

"The Cascadia bioregion-- British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon-- has long been at the forefront of cultural shifts occurring throughout North America, in particular regarding religious institutions, ideas, and practices. Religion at the Edge explores the rise of religious "nones," the decline of mainstream Christian denominations, spiritual and environmental innovation, increasing religious pluralism, and the growth of smaller, more traditional faith groups. The first research-driven book to address religion, spirituality, and irreligion in the Pacific Northwest, Religion at the Edge expands our understanding of the nature, scale, and implications of socioreligious changes in North America, and the relevance of regionalism to that discussion."-- Provided by publisher

viii, 266 pages : illustrations, maps, charts ; 24 cm

Published in 1875, Theodor Kirchhoff's Reisebilder und Skizzen aus Amerika offers a rich, descriptive travelogue of the American West as observed by a German immigrant, poet, and former Pacific Northwest shopkeeper. The narrative vividly captures the rapid economic and infrastructural transformation of the frontier, documenting early transit oddities like the primitive Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad alongside the bustling, chaotic atmosphere of regional gold rush boomtowns like The Dalles. A keen insight drawn from the text is how Kirchhoff's position as a European intellectual provides a refreshing outsider's perspective on American expansion; unburdened by the nationalistic mythology of Manifest Destiny, he documents the eccentricities, raw commercialism, and unvarnished realities of the Pacific Northwest with a critical, cosmopolitan detachment often completely absent from domestic colonial boosterism.

2 volumes 19 cm

246 pages ; 23 cm

Reflections on early Cannon Beach captures the profound geographic isolation and subsequent environmental transformation of a small, rugged coastal enclave situated on the northern Oregon seaboard. Griffin details how the area's imposing physical barriers—specifically the towering, densely timbered prominence of Tillamook Head and the steep slopes of the Coast Range—rendered early overland travel exceptionally arduous, completely severing the community from inland population centers. By mapping the grueling pioneer journey that required boat transit from Astoria, rail to Seaside, and a precarious wagon ride over rough toll trails to Elk Creek, the narrative illustrates how the physical beach itself often served as the only viable highway. This intense spatial isolation initially preserved a primitive, resource-rich ecosystem where early residents relied entirely on the abundant marine life of the tidal zones. Ultimately, this localized memoir serves as a vital spatial history, demonstrating how the eventual penetration of these coastal barriers by large-scale logging and modern highways shattered the region's isolation, fundamentally transforming a resilient, self-sufficient frontier outpost into a heavily trafficked tourist landscape.

14 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Authored by the Shaw Island Writers Group with illustrations by Judith Laurel Harkness, Reflections: Mostly True Stories and Occasional Poems captures the intimate, quirky rhythms of life on one of San Juan County's smallest and most isolated inhabited islands. The collection weaves together personal essays, local folklore, and evocative poetry penned by residents who navigate ferry schedules, one-lane dirt roads, and a profound sense of insular community. Through these unvarnished community chronicles, the text preserves the quiet humor and daily resilience required to thrive away from mainland conveniences. A keen insight drawn from the work is how collective island storytelling acts as an essential psychological buffer against isolation; by transforming everyday domestic mishaps and environmental encounters into shared literature, small island communities forge a resilient internal culture that celebrates their deliberate detachment from the fast-paced modern world.

115 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

Covers Kamloops and the following localities and areas in Thompson- Nicola Regional District: Lytton, Spences Bridge, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Walhachin, Savona, Monte Creek, Pritchard, Chase, Heffley Creek, Barriere, Clearwater, Birch Island, and North Thompson. From Chase to Lytton and from Blue River to Kamloops, the communities of the Thomson Valley are linked by a magnificent river. But they are also linked by a common past that is largely overlooked in the general histories of British Columbia. This collection of new writing explores the neglected post-settlement history shared by the communities of the Thompson Valley. Supporting the text are seventy-two photographs - many published for the first time.

x, 198 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Vardis Fisher was one of Idaho's most accomplished writers. His attention to western landscape and rural culture left a lasting, albeit controversial, legacy. These twelve evocative essays explore the impact and achievement of Fisher s work and life.

xiii, 254 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

"This book is a history of hypocrisy." So begins Daniel Francis, BC's leading popular historian, as he explores the colourful and ultimately tragic story of prostitution in Vancouver. He writes: "The city's political and social leaders consistently have treated prostitutes as pariahs whose presence was tolerated, sometimes exploited, but never approved. All the while, the authorities collected millions of dollars in fines and licence fees from businesses that everyone knew were, and are, fronts for the sex trade."

192 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Grays Harbor was the Lumber Capital of the World. While thousands of lumber and maritime workers fought for higher wages and decent conditions, employers unified to protect their interests, often through violent and corrupt means. They spied on unionists, expelled them from their own towns, vilified them in the press, and physically assaulted labor activists. But with deep roots in their communities, radical workers continued to meet in their halls and immigrant neighborhoods—and to influence the wider labor movement well into the 1930s. In Red Harbor, Aaron Goings resurrects the forgotten history of lumber workers in a bastion of labor radicalism, examining the conflict as workers faced down an alliance of employers, police, and violent anti-radicals, including the Ku Klux Klan. But he goes beyond these clashes to illuminate the vital roles of families, immigrants, and working-class women in the labor movement, revealing how people fought not only for labor rights but also for the good of their communities. The Industrial Workers of the World (or Wobblies) in particular adopted views and tactics from socialist Finnish immigrants while authoring programs responsive to local needs and supported by the people—radical and otherwise. Vivid and revealing, Red Harbor shines a light on lumber workers and the pursuit of justice in the Pacific Northwest.

360 Pages, 6 x 9 in, 19 b&w illus

Recording Their Story describes the life of James Teit, one of Canada's earliest ethnographers, and his work among the Tahltan people of northern British Columbia almost a century ago. Teit's work collecting artifacts, taking photographs, recording songs, transcribing myths, and gathering information about social organization, ceremonial life, customs, and beliefs has proved invaluable. Today, this collection is the most important extant assemblage of the Tahltan's heritage. James Teit emigrated from the Shetland Islands to British Columbia in 1884, at the age of nineteen. He reveled in the outdoor life and became, among other things, a hunting guide, a linguist who spoke several aboriginal languages fluently, and an activist for Native rights. Teit's connection to the Canadian Museum of Civilization and his ethnographic work among the Tahltan began in 1911, when he was invited to join the staff of the new Anthropology Division of the Geological Survey of Canada. Teit then worked among the Tahltan, at their request and with the participation of many within the community, in both 1912 and 1915. Judy Thompson's examination of Teit's extensive correspondence, fieldwork notebooks, diaries, and manuscripts illustrates how James Teit's life and work impacted his major ethnographic studies. Recording Their Story is part biography and part catalog of the Tahltan ethnographic collection. The book is richly illustrated throughout with 71 rare historic photographs, 51 beautiful color images of ethnographic artifacts, six line drawings, and three maps.

xi, 207 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 29 cm

A collection of photographs taken at each of Seattle's 334 parks. Includes a brief history of Seattle parks, location and size of each park, and comments on the photographs. Our names are James and Jackson. In October of 2009 we made the decision to visit and take a photograph at every park in our hometown of Seattle, Washington; a city known for its natural beauty best observed through its exceptional park system. The basic idea was to include ourselves and the rainbow colored park sign that welcomes you to each park in each photograph to more or less "prove" we were there. It ended up taking us 3 years and 8 months to visit every one. We rode our bicycles to 207 of the parks and were able to include 187 different people in the project: some old friends, new friends, acquaintances, strangers, animals and even the Mayor of Seattle.

255 pages : color illustrations ; 23 x 31 cm

"The personal journals examined in Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent are not the witty, erudite, and gracefully written exercises that have drawn the attention of most biographers and literary scholars. Prosaic, ungrammatical, and poorly spelled, the fifteen surviving volumes of Henry Trent's hitherto unexamined diaries are nevertheless a treasure for the social and cultural historian. Henry Trent was born in England in 1826, the son of a British naval officer. When he was still a boy, his father decided to begin a new life as a landed gentleman and moved the family to Lower Canada. At the age of sixteen Trent began writing in a diary which he maintained, intermittently, for more than fifty years. As a lonely youth he narrates days spent hunting and trapping in the woods owned by his father. On the threshold of manhood and in search of a vocation, he writes about his experiences in London and then on Vancouver Island during the gold rush. And finally, as the father of a large family, he describes the daily struggle to make ends meet on the farm he inherited in Quebec's lower St Francis valley. As it follows Trent through the different stages of his long life, Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent explores the complexities of class and colonialism, gender roles within the rural family, and the transition from youth to manhood to old age. The diaries provide a rare opportunity to read the thoughts and follow the experiences of a man who who, like many Victorian-era immigrants of the privileged class, struggled to adapt to the Canadian environment during the rise of the industrial age."-- Provided by publisher

1 online resource.

Aboard a small handmade boat, Sam McKinney set out to rediscover the Columbia River of his youth. The story of his voyage offers an intimate history of the great river and of the people who have lived and worked along its shores. McKinney, a seasoned explorer, historian, and riverman, begins his voyage on the sea. Following the path of Robert Gray's ship Columbia Rediviva across the treacherous Columbia River bar, he embarks on an upriver journey that leads beyond urban Portland to the barrier of Bonneville Dam. Along the way, he visits the sites of old Indian villages, the camps of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the rotting piers of early river communities, and the islands of the lower river. Walking out along the jetty at the mouth of the Columbia, McKinney recounts how this infamous bar was formed, and how it was tamed by turn-of-the-century marine engineering. He sloshes through Astoria's rainy streets, recalling its origins as the first American outpost on the Pacific Slope and its lusty past as a working waterfront. His voyage takes him to ghost towns and abandoned villages — Chinookville, Frankfort, Knappton. He describes the development of the river's fishing industry and the harsh conditions faced by fishers during the industry's peak years. He remembers his own boyhood, working on the river as a gillnet fisherman and as a deckhand aboard one of the last sternwheelers. Combining the river's storied history, rich personal memories, and observations gleaned from the deck of the 16-foot Gander, McKinney gives us a sensitive portrait of the Columbia river, a book that reflects the rhythms of tides that the author knows so well. "Two weeks on the river and I was only fifty miles upstream," writes McKinney, grounded on a hidden sandbar. "My wake, had it been recorded, would have revealed a slow, wandering track of curiosity — islands explored, old townsites discovered, and unnamed channels followed." Sam McKinney is a founder of the Lewis and Clark Columbia River Water Trail and the author of Bligh: A True Account of the Mutiny Aboard HMS Bounty. In the late 1980's he completed a 4-year, 5000-mile journey across North America through the inland waterways of the continent. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is a research associate at the Vancouver maritime Museum.

xi, 172 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Dorothy Lawson McCall’s memoir, Ranch Under the Rimrock, chronicles her dramatic transition from high-society Boston to the rugged high desert of Central Oregon in 1911. The narrative is deeply rooted in the dramatic geography of the Crooked River canyon, where imposing basalt cliffs and arid sagebrush flats defined her unforgiving new environment. Centered on her family's sprawling agricultural estate near Prineville, the book vividly details the physical challenges of adapting to this remote, inland Pacific Northwest landscape. Through her pioneering experiences, McCall maps the harsh but beautiful terrain of Oregon's rimrock country during the early twentieth century.

xiii, 166 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm

Often called The Crusoe of Lonesome Lake, because of a best-selling book written by the American journalist Leland Stowe, Edwards has gone on to live at least one more life and reveals himself to be a pioneer of a breed that no longer exists. Best known for his almost single-handed rescue of the trumpeter swans from extinction in North America, Edwards now related in his own words other aspects of his long, varied life, including experience with his missionary parents in India, as a telegraph operator under fire in World War I and his eventual return to Lonesome Lake.

293 pages, 20 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

Construction of the University of Idaho's Kibbie Dome, which won the American Society of Civil Engineer's Outstanding Structural Achievement Award for 1976, demonstrates what can be accomplished within a framework of limited budgets and tight timelines. The proposed structure would have a 400 foot clear span, with a clearance above the field equivalent to a twelve-story building.

61 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Raise Hell and Sell Newspapers, the lively biography of Alden J. Blethen, traces the newspaperman's life from his birth in 1845 to his death in 1915. Longtime editor-in-chief of The Seattle Times, Blethen became the most powerful and influential publisher in the Northwest and one of the foremost newspapermen of his generation. Authors Sharon A. Boswell and Lorraine McConaghy tell the compelling story of this self-made man during a period of dramatic change in American life. Alden Blethen arrived in Seattle broke in 1896, after making and losing fortunes as a newspaper owner and publisher in Kansas City and Minneapolis. One year later, the Klondike gold rush transformed the muddy Puget Sound seaport into a magnificent boomtown. Using a loan from his brother-in-law, Blethen purchased a share in The Seattle Times. During the next two decades, as Seattle grew into the queen city of the Northwest, Blethen transformed The Times into the region's largest paper and reclaimed his family's fortune.

x, 291 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 27 cm

The Rainier Centennial Book Committee’s Rainier, Oregon: History and Heritage on the Columbia documents the settlement and industrial growth of the river port community situated opposite the mouth of the Cowlitz River. Founded in 1851 as "Eminence" by pioneer Charles E. Fox, the work traces how early water-powered sawmills and fishing stations were established directly along ancestral Chinookan river fisheries. The text details the rapid expansion of industrial sawmilling, the operation of the historic Longview-Rainier ferry fleets, and the 1930 completion of the Longview Bridge (Lewis and Clark Bridge) that connected Columbia County directly to Washington State. Detailed family genealogies and cadastral surveys record the rural farming and logging communities scattered across the surrounding hills and tributary valleys, including Apiary, Goble, Alston, Hudson, and Delena.

264 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 29 cm

Lilies and Fireweed is packed with unforgettable stories of women surviving in the unforgiving, sometimes hostile environment of pioneer and aboriginal British Columbia. Based on award-winning journalist Stephen Hume's popular series "Frontier Women of BC" that appeared in the Vancouver Sun in 2002, this collection of essays contains stories, photographs and other materials that have never before been published. From hospitals to dance halls, and from the classroom to the cannery floor, this insightful pictorial history examines indigenous and immigrant women's positions in the workplace, home and wilderness. Hume delves into the lives of aboriginal and pioneer women who had an important and multifaceted influence on the development of British Columbia. We meet women such as 17-year-old Frances Barkley, who insisted on accompanying her husband on a merchant voyage to British Columbia in 1786 and subsequently twice circumnavigated the world; Lady Amelia Douglas - a Cree woman and wife of Governor James Douglas - who had her own important but often overlooked role in the forging of British Columbia; Mrs. Washiji Oya, the first Japanese woman to settle in Canada in 1887; and Maria Pollard Grant, who, in 1895, became the first woman elected to public office in BC. Brimming with fascinating historical photographs, Lilies and Fireweed brings to light the forgotten stories of mothers, dance-hall girls, artists, teachers and adventurers that are as enthralling and diverse as BC itself.

80 p. : ill., ports. ; 28 cm.

Authored by Bruce Ramsey and edited by Roland Neave, Rain People: The Story of Ocean Falls chronicles the rise and fall of the isolated, company-owned pulp and paper mill town nestled in the rugged coastal fjords of British Columbia. The book traces the community's mid-century heyday as a thriving industrial enclave accessible only by boat or plane, powered by torrential local rainfall and sustained by a tight-knit working-class population. Through archival photographs and personal accounts, the text details the sudden, devastating corporate closure that transformed a bustling boomtown into a damp ghost town. A keen insight drawn from the work is how corporate paternalism created a profound psychological vulnerability in remote industrial outposts; when distant executives pulled the plug on the mill, residents discovered that their entire social fabric, municipal infrastructure, and sense of identity had been built on foundation stones owned entirely by a corporation.

xi, 240 p. : ill., maps (1 folded), ports. ; 22 cm.

Christine Barrett and the Laurelhurst Community Club's A history of Laurelhurst chronicles the suburban transformation of a densely wooded peninsula extending into the deep waters of Lake Washington and Union Bay in northeast Seattle. Set against these defining shorelines and the distant backdrop of the Cascade Range, the narrative details how early developers and pioneering families transitioned a rugged, logged-over landscape into a highly structured residential enclave. By tracing the active civic engagement of the neighborhood's foundational kinship networks, the text reveals how residents cooperatively built robust local institutions and shared social traditions to anchor their new lakeside homesteads. Ultimately, this local history documents how the deliberate planning and tight-knit family bonds of these early settlers successfully transformed an isolated waterfront frontier into one of the city's most enduring and cohesive communities.

76 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

Railroads, Reclamation, and the River chronicles the transformation of Pasco from a desolate, wind-swept desert outpost into a vital regional hub strategically situated at the confluence of the Columbia, Snake, and Yakima rivers in southeastern Washington. Oberst details how the sprawling, relatively flat topography of this arid inland basin made it a natural geographic juncture for early transcontinental railways, breaking the area's profound isolation by linking the interior shrub-steppe to distant coastal markets. The narrative heavily emphasizes the monumental engineering efforts required to harness the immense volume of these converging waterways, mapping out the large-scale irrigation projects that finally allowed settlers to conquer the severe, dry climate and cultivate the sun-baked soil. Ultimately, the book serves as a localized environmental and industrial history, demonstrating how the precise hydrological positioning of this settlement fundamentally dictated its survival and economic evolution within the harsh extremes of the Pacific Northwest interior.

224 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

Railroading in Southern Oregon and the Founding of Medford by regional historians Bert and Margie Webber is a 1985 transportation and local history book published by Ye Galleon Press in Fairfield, Washington. The volume extensively chronicles the profound economic and geographical impact the arrival of the Oregon and California Railroad had on the Rogue River Valley in the late 19th century. The authors detail how the railroad bypass of the established pioneer town of Jacksonville directly catalyzed the establishment and rapid boom of Medford, shifting the political and commercial center of gravity in Jackson County. Heavily illustrated with archival photographs and historical rail data, the book ultimately serves as an authoritative and highly specific resource for understanding how early railroad expansion dictated the civic landscape, settlement patterns, and industrial growth of southern Oregon.

255 pages : illustrations, map, portraits ; 26 cm

Demonstrates that the railroads profoundly affected the way people lived, how they adjusted to the new opportunities or threats that swift and cheap transportation provided. In short, how they viewed the world.This book is for everyone fascinated by trains and their nineteenth-century opening of the great Northwest. With cases of pictures never before published this book tracks the stories of families lured to settle in the west, revelations about railroad buccaneers, and breathtaking engineering feats of bridges over daunting gorges - Gene Shalit, The Today Show, NBC

359 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 x 27 cm