Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

A conversation with W.J. Gamble about his life working for the Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway Company from 1910 until his retirement in 1951, including the origins and development of the railroad and his relationship with it.

16 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 26 cm

Historian Carlos A. Schwantes studies the forces that shaped the history of the labor movement on either side of the forty-ninth parallel and the reason for the eventual demise of the socialist movement in Washington State and its continuing vigor in British Columbia.

xviii, 288 pages : maps ; 24 cm. (8vo).

Beryl M. Wheeler’s Quesnel Forks: The Gold City documents the historical geography of Quesnel Forks, an early major supply and administrative depot established at the confluence of the North and South Quesnel rivers. Wheeler traces the settlement's rapid emergence during the 1859 gold discoveries along the Cariboo river systems, detailing how early pack trails and wooden flumes were laid down across traditional Secwépemc territory. The work focuses extensively on the substantial Chinese merchant and mining population that sustained the town for decades after European prospectors departed for Williams Creek, maintaining stores, gardens, and community halls. Wheeler records the engineering of hydraulic mining flumes connecting Quesnel Forks to Likely, Keithley Creek, and Hydraulic, preserving a vital record of this historic multi-ethnic community prior to its complete abandonment.

48 pages : illustrations, map, portraits ; 23 cm

Gordon R. Elliott’s Quesnel: Commercial Centre of the Cariboo Gold Colony stands as the foundational civic and economic study of the pivotal river hub located at the confluence of the Fraser and Quesnel rivers. Elliott chronicles how the ancestral river crossing and fishing territory of the Southern Carrier (Dakelh) people was converted into a bustling supply depot during the 1860s gold rush. The text details Quesnel’s strategic position as the inland terminus for Fraser River sternwheelers, where freight teams, pack trains, and stagecoaches assembled before making the final eastward ascent toward the Cariboo goldfields. Elliott traces the development of early agricultural benches across Bouchie Lake, Barlow Creek, and Red Bluff, while documenting the town’s enduring commercial evolution into a forestry and distribution centre following the arrival of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway.

62 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

Published in local editions by Kay Frances Reinartz, Queen Anne: Community on the Hill chronicles the rich neighborhood history and architectural evolution of one of Seattle’s most prominent geographic landmarks. The book traces the area's transformation from a dense evergreen forest and native camp into an affluent residential streetcar suburb offering sweeping vistas of Elliott Bay and the Cascade Mountains. Through archival photographs, diaries, and municipal records, the text captures the daily lives of early residents who shaped the hill's distinct community identity amidst rapid urban growth below. A keen insight drawn from the work is how topographical isolation can preserve a distinct community consciousness within an expanding metropolis; by literally rising above the industrial grit and commercial clamor of downtown Seattle, Queen Anne Hill allowed its residents to curate an architectural enclave that visually and socially equated geographic elevation with civic prestige.

viii, 231 pages : illustrations, maps ; 28 cm

Qualicum Beach: A History of Vancouver Island's Best Kept Secrets is a non-fiction historical work by Brad Wylie, first published in 1992. The book offers a detailed look at the history of the Qualicum Beach region, highlighting its cultural heritage and place within Canadian history. Across its 222 pages, Wylie traces the area's early stories, first settlements, and key regional milestones that helped shape this beautiful coastal community on Vancouver Island. It provides an engaging and informative resource for readers interested in local lore, heritage, and the fascinating historical development of one of British Columbia's unique communities.

219 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

For many early Americans, native and immigrant, Puyallup was much more than simply a destination in Western Washington, but was a fulfillment of a dream, a vision of prosperity and opportunity. The lush valley region along the Puyallup River provided both beauty and bounty, sustaining countless generations and a variety of cultures, from the early American Indians to the later European explorers and settlers. Within this untamed wilderness, a group of hardy and self-reliant pioneers began the great task of carving a livelihood, and through their extraordinary efforts, created a lasting monument to their courage and determination-the city of Puyallup. Puyallup: A Pioneer Paradise chronicles the story of the city's evolution from the indigenous tribe that once populated the valley to the post-World War II building boom that attracted thousands of new residents. Readers travel across several centuries of change as the country of the "Generous People," or Puyallup tribe, succumbed to the unyielding waves of new people, such as the colonists of the Hudson's Bay Company, the stalwart Naches Pass Immigrants, and scores of later men and women searching for the promise of land. This unique volume traces the city's varied history, including its once-prominent agricultural traditions in hops, berries, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and Christmas trees, and remembers a host of its colorful characters, citizens like Ezra Meeker and J.P. Stewart, who worked tirelessly to promote Puyallup's development and supplied much of the land and leadership necessary for its growth.

160 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

"What happens to rural communities when their traditional economic base collapses? When new money comes in, who gets left behind? Pushed Out offers a rich portrait of Dover, Idaho, whose transformation from "thriving timber mill town" to "economically depressed small town" to "trendy second-home location" over the past four decades embodies the story and challenges of many other rural communities. Sociologist Ryanne Pilgeram explores the structural forces driving rural gentrification and examines how social and environmental inequality are written onto these landscapes. Based on in-depth interviews and archival data, she grounds this highly readable ethnography in a long view of the region that takes account of geological history, settler colonialism, and histories of power and exploitation within capitalism. Pilgeram's analysis reveals the processes and mechanisms that make such communities vulnerable to gentrification and points the way to a radical justice that prioritizes the economic, social, and environmental sustainability necessary to restore these communities"-- Provided by publisher

xv, 194 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 24 cm

"Oregon is commonly perceived to have little, let alone notable, South Asian history. Yet in the early 1900s Oregon was at the center of two entwined quests for Indian independence and civic belonging that rocked the world. Punjabi Rebels of the Columbia River traces the stories of the radical Indian independence organization known as Ghadar and Bhagat Singh Thind's era-defining US Supreme Court citizenship case. Ghadar sought the overthrow of India's British colonizers while Thind utilized sanctioned legal channels to do so. Despite widely differing strategies, both the movement and the man were targeted, often in coordination, by the highest levels of the US and British governments. The empires' united message: India would not be an independent country and Indians could not be citizens. In the decades that followed, it was a verdict Indians refused to abide. Johanna Ogden's detailed history of migrants' experience expands the time frame, geographic boundaries, and knowledge of the conditions and contributions of Indians in North America. It is the story of a people's awakening amid a rich community of international workers in an age of nationalist uprisings. To understand why one of the smallest western Indian settlements became a resistance center, Punjabi Rebels mines the colonial underpinnings of labor, race, and place-making and their regional and global connections, rendering a history of whiteness and labor as much as of Indian-ness and migration. The first work to rejoin the lived experience of Thind and Ghadar activists, Punjabi Rebels complicates our understanding not just of the global fight for Indian political rights but of multi-racial democracy"-- Provided by publisher

296 pages

With the same ability to make personalities and events come alive that characterizes his classic "Skid Road", Murray Morgan here tells the colorful story of southern Puget Sound, where major events of Washington's history took place, and of Tacoma, the area's principal city. Drawing upon the original journals and reports, Morgan tells his story largely in terms of individuals, interweaving portraits of well-known historical figures with those who are more obscure but who have a special significance. Journalist and historian Murray Morgan (1916-2000) was the author of more than twenty books, including "Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle" and "The Last Wilderness". He worked for "Time" magazine, the "New York Herald Tribune", and CBS News before returning to Washington where he taught at Tacoma Community College and for fifteen years hosted the early morning radio show 'Our Town, Our World.'

360 s. : illustrations

Authored by Carolyn Neal and Thomas Kilday Janus, Puget Sound Ferries: From Canoe to Catamaran, an Illustrated History presents a visual and narrative chronicle of the vessels that have spanned Washington’s inland sea across generations. The book traces the technological evolution of water transit from indigenous dugout canoes and early steam-powered "mosquito fleet" boats to modern automobile ferries and high-speed catamarans. Richly illustrated with historical photographs and detailed vessel logs, the text highlights how changing ship designs directly reflected the growing mobility needs of a decentralized coastal population. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the ferry system functioned as the original democratic equalizer of the region; by stitching together disparate islands and mainland shorelines before bridges were feasible, these vessels created a unified regional community out of a fragmented marine geography.

224 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm

Compiled by publisher Robert A. Reid, Puget Sound and Western Washington: Cities—Towns—Scenery serves as a highly visual, promotional catalog of the region's rapid early 20th-century urban and industrial expansion. Through extensive photographic plates and glowing captions, the book captures a sweeping panorama of bustling deep-water ports, sprawling timber operations, and modernizing civic architecture emerging from the dense coastal forests. Designed primarily for tourists and prospective investors, the pictorial volume functioned to visually prove that the untamed Pacific Northwest had successfully been transformed into a sophisticated, economically robust cornerstone of the American empire. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the strategic curation of early commercial photography operated as an irrefutable tool of regional boosterism; by relying on the presumed objectivity of the camera to document gleaming cityscapes and orderly timber yards while meticulously omitting the displaced indigenous communities and scarred clear-cuts, the volume crafted a sanitized, visual mythology of painless industrial progress.

192 pages : frontispiece, illustrations, map ; 27 cm

In the years following World War II, the world’s biggest dam was almost built in Hells Canyon on the Snake River in Idaho. Karl Boyd Brooks tells the story of the dam controversy, which became a referendum not only on public-power expansion but also on the environmental implications of the New Deal’s natural resources and economic policy. Private-power critics of the Hells Canyon High Dam posed difficult questions about the implications of damming rivers to create power and to grow crops. Activists, attorneys, and scientists pioneered legal tactics and political rhetoric that would help to define the environmental movement in the 1960s. The debate, however, was less about endangered salmon or threatened wild country and more about who would control land and water and whether state enterprise or private capital would oversee the supply of electricity. By thwarting the dam’s construction, Snake Basin irrigators retained control over water as well as economic and political power in Idaho, putting the state on a postwar path that diverged markedly from that of bordering states. In the end, the opponents of the dam were responsible for preserving high deserts and mountain rivers from radical change. With Public Power, Private Dams, Karl Brooks makes an important contribution not only to the history of the Pacific Northwest and the region’s anadromous fisheries but also to the environmental history of the United States in the period after World War II.

xxvii, 290 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Six weeks after the 1929 stock market crash, Frank Bruce Robinson created a self-help religion he called Psychiana. An ingenious mass-marketing pioneer, he sold a correspondence course promising health, wealth, and happiness to those who believed in the “God Power.” In the midst of the Great Depression, his mail-order religion with a money-back guarantee swept the United States and spread to some sixty-seven countries – or so its founder claimed – to become one of the most successful twentieth century New Thought religions. Facing charges of passport fraud in May 1936, an immaculately dressed Robinson arrived at the federal building in rural Moscow, Idaho. A person of considerable local and regional significance, he was Latah County’s largest private employer. Throngs lined the streets and sidewalks waiting for him. He exited his sleek green Duesenberg, waved to the crowd, and smiled for pictures. His son later wrote that the charismatic leader possessed “an insatiable appetite for publicity.” Central to the investigation was Robinson’s true identity. He was not all he claimed to be, and his small-town trial captivated the country and made national headlines. A full-length biography of Robinson combined with an in-depth historical examination of Psychiana, this book traces the improbable rise and fall of a master charlatan while also giving voice to his unwavering followers – from a Dust Bowl farmer to a former heavyweight boxing champion – who clung to their beliefs despite ongoing financial and emotional costs. Their stories reveal how adversity can galvanize faith in a false prophet, and paint an intriguing, intimate portrait of a nation challenged by a brutal depression and war. Brandon R. Schrand is the local, award-winning author of The Enders Hotel: A Memoir and Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior. His nonfiction has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Utne Reader, the Georgia Review, North American Review, and numerous other publications. A winner of the Pushcart Prize, he has also been a resident at Yaddo.

xv, 397 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm

"In 1847, Protestant missionary Marcus Whitman was killed after a disastrous eleven-year effort to evangelize the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. By 1897, Whitman was a national hero, celebrated in textbooks, monuments, and historical scholarship as the 'Savior of Oregon.' But his fame was based on a tall tale--one that was about to be exposed. Sarah Koenig traces the rise and fall of Protestant missionary Marcus Whitman's legend, revealing two patterns in the development of American history. On the one hand is providential history, marked by the conviction that God is an active agent in human history and that historical work can reveal patterns of divine will. On the other hand is objective history, which arose from the efforts of Catholics and other racial and religious outsiders to resist providentialists' pejorative descriptions of non-Protestants and nonwhites. Koenig examines how these competing visions continue to shape understandings of the American past and the nature of historical truth."-- Provided by publisher

xii, 280 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

"In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Portland made national news with nightly social justice protests, often met with violent response by counter protestors and law enforcement. Though frequently regarded as a progressive hub, Portland has a long history of racial inequality and oppression, and the city's entrenched divisions gained new attention during the Trump years. The photographs in Protest City present a visceral visual record of this significant moment in Portland's history. Rian Dundon, who has been photographing the rise of extreme politics on the West Coast since 2016, lived only a short walk from the protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd. For one hundred days, Dundon enmeshed himself in the demonstrations with an unobtrusive point-and-shoot camera. The result is a graphic portrayal of how social movements become politicized, how spectacle serves as a subtext to change in the digital age, and how modern protests blur distinctions among performance, ritual, and surveillance. As he follows the progress of Portland's conflicts, Dundon draws connections to Oregon's legacy as a stronghold of white supremacist extremism and interrogates the role of whiteness in racial justice movements. Dundon's striking photos recreate the immediacy and impact of the protests, while a foreword by journalist Donnell Alexander and introduction by historian Carmen P. Thompson contextualize the uprising's sociopolitical background. A chronology and author's note are also featured"-- Page 4 of cover

xxviii, 187 pages : color illustrations ; 26 cm

Increasing awareness of the beneficial role of native plants in promoting healthy ecosystems has generated new interest in propagation techniques. Native plants have been recognized as a crucial component of land management, especially after fires or other disturbances, and are widely used in habitat conservation efforts. In addition, native plants are increasingly desirable for landscaping and gardening. Propagation of Pacific Northwest Native Plants, the first publication of its kind, provides propagation information on nearly one hundred and forty native plants. Designed for use by both nursery professionals and home gardeners, this working manual presents the most current and comprehensive information in this emerging field. Drawn from forestry and agricultural journals, as well as gardening and horticultural handbooks and personal sources, the techniques presented here offer invaluable direction to the many who wish to grow native plants. The book is divided into four plant sections: shrubs, trees, forbs, and grasses. In addition to propagation techniques, the species accounts feature physical descriptions and information on habitat and geographic range. Abundant line drawings and an illustrated glossary help to ensure accurate use of this important new resource.

viii, 248 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Robert Monaghan’s Pronunciation Guide of Oregon Place Names provides a unique linguistic and cultural chronicle of the state's diverse indigenous and pioneer heritage, serving as a phonetic map of human settlement across a profoundly fragmented landscape. The compilation implicitly maps the sprawling, varied topography of Oregon, tracing a vast geographic vocabulary that spans from the storm-battered, rain-swept coastal estuaries and the towering, densely timbered barrier of the Cascade Range, out to the arid, sprawling sagebrush steppes of the inland high desert.

By detailing the precise, often counterintuitive local pronunciations of remote towns, volatile rivers, and precipitous mountain passes, the book illustrates how early human adaptation was intimately tied to specific, physically isolated geographic pockets. The text highlights how the region’s formidable topographical barriers effectively preserved distinct linguistic microclimates, where the complex vocabularies of indigenous nations—whose languages were deeply adapted to local ecological realities—collided and inextricably merged with the dialects of transient French-Canadian fur trappers and weary overland pioneers. Ultimately, the guide captures the enduring cultural imprint of Oregon’s severe environmental realities, demonstrating how mastering the authentic spoken nomenclature of this rugged, varied terrain serves as an oral record of surviving, claiming, and integrating into the diverse physical landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

81 pages ; 23 cm

The Program of Columbia River Historical Expedition, July 15-27, 1926 serves as an official itinerary for a monumental commemorative rail tour sponsored by the Great Northern Railway, retracing the vital pioneer, fur trade, and indigenous routes connecting the Midwest to the Pacific Coast. Rather than a traditional historical narrative, the publication catalogs a twelve-day mobile symposium of historians, civic leaders, and students traveling aboard a specialized train to dedicate permanent regional landmarks—such as the Astoria Column in Oregon and the Pathfinder Monument at Bonners Ferry—while participating in commemorative congresses and ceremonies with regional indigenous nations. By documenting the specific route stops, historical addresses, and curated traveling exhibits of frontier artifacts, the text reveals how early twentieth-century corporate and civic alliances worked cooperatively to memorialize the region's complex pioneer history. Ultimately, this itinerary functions as a unique historical artifact in itself, demonstrating how the modernizing Pacific Northwest deliberately curated and physically mapped the legacy of its early pathfinders onto its expanding industrial rail infrastructure.

Dedication of the Astoria Column 1926

[34] pages : maps ; 26 cm

In Profanity Hill, Irene Burns Miller recounts her 1940 experience as the sole relocation supervisor tasked with clearing a decaying Seattle neighborhood to make way for the Yesler Terrace public housing project. The book details her daily interactions with the area's diverse and marginalized residents, including sex workers, immigrants, and impoverished families who were facing eviction despite the city having almost no rental vacancy. Through personal anecdotes, Miller highlights the stark power dynamics and emotional toll of dismantling a tightly knit, albeit crumbling, community in the name of urban progress. Ultimately, the narrative chronicles the complete displacement of the neighborhood's original inhabitants to pave the way for a newly constructed vision of public housing.

iv, 139 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

"The grisly murder of a nurse, a crippling 1917 strike, death on the wartime battlefield, the 1918–19 flu pandemic, life on the home front—these are just some of the historic events covered in the early days of the Trail Creek News. In Printer’s Devils, historian Ron Verzuh offers both a study of pioneer journalism and a social history of the smelter city of Trail as it grew into a small but prosperous community. He traces the stories of residents and their evolving attitudes, pastimes and opinions as they respond in times of economic crisis, war, labour strife and life-threatening disease against the backdrop of one of Canada’s pioneer industrial centres. Beneath these stories is a revealing exploration into the lives of six Trail News editors—Trail’s printer’s devils—in which we see firsthand how their editorial choices were honed by their education, business priorities and experience as tramp printers in the early days of newspaper publishing in the region. Delving back through layers of history, Printer’s Devils: The Feisty Pioneer Newspaper That Shaped the History of British Columbia’s Smelter City is a tribute to the lasting impact of journalism in Canadian society, as chronicled in one single-industry town."-- Provided by publisher

pages cm

R. Geddes Large’s Prince Rupert, a Gateway to Alaska chronicles the ambitious, heavily mechanized struggle to carve a transcontinental railway terminus out of the punishing, muskeg-shrouded topography of British Columbia’s remote northern coast. The narrative maps how the sheer physical severity of Kaien Island—characterized by relentless maritime downpours, impenetrable temperate rainforests, and unyielding bedrock—required massive explosive engineering simply to secure a structural foothold for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Despite the agonizing overland construction through the rugged Coast Mountains, the settlement's precise location was strictly dictated by the immense strategic value of its deep-water, ice-free harbor, which offered an unparalleled maritime shortcut to Asian markets and northern frontier resources. Ultimately, the book illustrates how conquering this profoundly isolated and inhospitable coastal geography was the absolute prerequisite for establishing a vital, industrialized marine gateway to Alaska and the broader Pacific seaboard.

210 pages illustrations 29 cm

Preserving Washington's history: a Bicentennial report examines the comprehensive preservation of early pioneer settlement, military fortification, and resource extraction across the vast, environmentally fractured landscape of the Pacific Northwest. The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission details how the state's formidable physical barriers—specifically the towering, volcanic spine of the Cascade Range, the treacherous maritime chokepoints of Puget Sound, and the sweeping, semi-arid expanses of the inland Columbia Basin—strictly dictated the initial margins of human survival and territorial expansion. By mapping the immense physical labor required to establish the diverse heritage sites now protected within the parks system—ranging from isolated coastal artillery batteries lashed by Pacific storms to precarious dryland agricultural outposts—the narrative highlights the monumental effort necessary to anchor permanent communities within these demanding, highly varied environments. The profound geographic disparities across the territory initially forced early homesteaders and garrisons into a strict reliance on their immediate microclimates, completely anchoring their survival to either the deepwater marine highways of the western shores or the severe hydrological realities of the eastern river valleys. Ultimately, this institutional record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the severe climatic dualities, immense physical scale, and rugged topographical extremes of Washington fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, geographically partitioned character of the frontier sites preserved today.

93 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

John W. Evans’s Powerful rockey: the Blue Mountains and the Oregon Trail, 1811-1883 explores the formidable geographic barriers and the profound overland adaptation required to navigate the final, grueling alpine stretches of the western migration route in northeastern Oregon. The narrative illustrates how the severe environmental realities of this rugged topography—defined by steep, densely timbered ridges, deep river ravines, and the sudden, harsh elevation gains rising abruptly from the arid eastern plains—required immense physical resilience and shared, cooperative labor from exhausted nineteenth-century emigrants. By detailing the gradual transition from precarious indigenous footpaths utilized by early fur trappers to the cooperative clearing of widened wagon roads and subsequent commercial toll routes, the text highlights how overcoming this massive geological hurdle was a defining, communal crucible for pioneers. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that patiently conquering the severe inclines of the Blue Mountains and collaboratively establishing vital supply settlements in the surrounding valleys were essential steps in transforming a treacherous wilderness barrier into an enduring, deeply rooted conduit for the civic and agricultural expansion of the Pacific Northwest.

xv, 374 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm

"The Columbia River and its tributaries hold the greatest hydroelectric power potential of any river system in America. The systematic development of the potential began with a survey of the Columbia River Basin by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Its subsequent report to Congress in 1931 recommended construction of a system of multipurpose dams of unprecedented size, difficulty, and expense. During the Great Depression, as part of President Roosevelt's efforts to remove men from relief roles, the federal government undertook to build two dams on the Columbia River following the Corp's master plan. They were completed in time to aid to the production of weaponry in World War II. Through the postwar economic boom, the government built more dams, distributing giant blocks of power to industry in a region whose economy until then had been mainly extractive. With a focus on the Pacific Northwest, this book treats of federal power in the dam-building era in America. The legacy of that era is conflicted. The hydroelectric development of the Columbia River Basin is incontrovertibly both one of the great technological achievements of the twentieth century and a massive incursion into nature. In keeping, this book discusses the development both from the side of engineering, the source of problems in the dam-building era, and from the side of nature, the source of problems in the era that succeeded it, the environmental. The Columbia River Basin is home to the country's greatest salmon runs, and dams have threatened their survival, even as nowhere else has so much effort and expense been directed to preserving them. Problems of power and of the environment have an urgency in today's world, and measures that address them are often contradictory. This book considers the measures and the place of hydroelectricity among alternative sources of energy."--page 4 of cover

xii, 244 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 26 cm