Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

iv, 72 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

Published by Binford & Mort and compiled by researchers Dean H. Byrd, Stanley R. Clarke, and Janice M. Healy, Oregon Burial Site Guide serves as a comprehensive genealogical and historical inventory of cemeteries across the state. The volume documents thousands of burial locations ranging from pioneer family plots and historic urban graveyards to remote rural resting places, providing precise geographic coordinates and historical context for each site. By systematically cataloging these final resting places, the text rescues forgotten local figures and early settlers from historical obscurity while mapping the shifting human settlement patterns of the Pacific Northwest. A keen insight drawn from the work is how regional cemeteries function as open-air archives of frontier demographics; the layout, marker materials, and clustering of these graves physically map out the waves of migration, epidemic diseases, and harsh environmental realities that shaped early Oregon communities long before modern municipal records were established.

xxxvi, 1180 pages : illustrations, maps ; 29 cm

Arthur Loreston Throckmorton’s Oregon Argonauts chronicles the economic transformation of the Willamette Valley, detailing how pioneer merchants built a localized capitalist empire despite the profound geographic isolation of the early Pacific Northwest. Cut off from eastern manufacturing by the impassable Rocky Mountains and vast inland steppes, early agrarian settlers were forced to rely on the treacherous aquatic highway of the Columbia River and volatile coastal shipping routes to export their agricultural surplus. The narrative illustrates how the sudden explosion of the California Gold Rush provided a ravenous market for this fertile topography, allowing savvy frontier merchants to monetize the region's agricultural wealth by mastering these unforgiving maritime supply chains. Ultimately, the account captures how overcoming severe continental detachment and navigating dangerous oceanic barriers was the absolute prerequisite for transitioning the territory from a primitive bartering outpost into an integrated, market-driven commercial economy.

xvii, 372 pages : illustrations, portraits, tables ; 24 cm

Oregon Archaeology tells the story of Oregon’s human history beginning more than 14,000 years ago with the earliest evidence of human occupation and continuing into the twentieth century. An historical narrative informed by evidence from critical sites, Oregon Archaeology carries the story forward, describing aspects of first encounters between Native Americans and newcomers of European and Asian heritage, as well as important trends in the development of modern Oregon. Oregon’s early human history is linked to four of the five major cultural regions of western North America: the Great Basin, the Columbia Plateau, the Northwest Coast, and the western valleys that share features with California’s Central Valley. Oregon Archaeology offers a coherent and unified history of an area that is highly differentiated geographically and culturally. Enriched with maps, photographs, line drawings, and an extensive bibliography, Oregon Archaeology is an essential reference for archaeology professionals and students and for general readers interested in Oregon’s Native American culture and history. Oregon Archaeology offers a coherent and unified history of an area that is highly differentiated geographically and culturally. A historical narrative informed by evidence from critical sites, Oregon Archaeology is enriched with maps, photographs, line drawings, and an extensive bibliography. Oregon Archaeology is an essential reference for archaeology professionals and students, and also for general readers interested in Oregon’s Native American culture and history.

496 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Modern western Oregon was a crucial site of imperial competition in North America during the formative decades of the United States. Whaley examines relations among newcomers and between newcomers and Native peoples--focusing on political sovereignty, religion, trade, sexuality, and the land--from initial encounters to Oregon's statehood. He argues that the process of Oregon's founding is best understood as a contest between the British empire and a nascent American one, with Oregon's Native people and their lands at the heart of the conflict

xi, 303 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

The first book account of the Donner Party. Thornton’s journal of his crossing with the Russell party in 1846 provides details of the Trail and the Donners and Reeds up to the parting of the ways at the Little Sandy. Thornton describes the difficulties he faced taking the Applegate Cutoff to Oregon and excoriated Applegate as a liar for promoting the route. Two years later he traveled to California where he interviewed Donner Party survivors and rescuers including William Eddy and researched accounts previously published in the California newspapers. Thornton’s description of the events set the tone for most of the Donner Party histories to this day. Thornton’s chapters about the Donner Party were excerpted and published as The California Tragedy, Biobooks, 1945, and Camp of Death, Outback Books, 1986

2 volumes : frontispiece, plates, folded map ; 20 cm.

Offers information needed to travel through Oregon's 19 original counties at the moment of statehood. This book includes: a map showing each county's 1859 place names; the history of native peoples and settlers; and early roads and bridges. It includes historical photographs. Oregon became the 33d state in the Union on February 14, 1859. Portland had wooden sidewalks, and gold glittered in southern Oregon streams. Towns like Lookingglass, Needy, and Sodaville were springing up all around. It is a time to remember—and to revisit—today, 150 years later, with this detailed and lively guide. Janice Marschner provides all you need to travel through each of Oregon's 19 original counties at the moment of statehood: a map showing each county's 1859 place names and current reference points; the history of native peoples and settlers; early roads and bridges; the first homes, schools, stores, hotels, and churches; biographical sketches of notable individuals throughout the state; lists of family names from Applegate and Lovejoy to McLoughlin, Reed, and Zumwalt; and sites to see. Historical photographs show the determined faces of natives and settlers; their oxen and wagons on wide, rough roads; their rafts and ferries on the rivers; and their towns under development.

295 pages : illustrations, maps (chiefly color) ; 24 cm

"In 1922, the US Forest Service offered one of the largest timber sales in the agency's history, encompassing 890 million board feet of mostly Ponderosa pine timber in the mountains north of Burns, Oregon. Among other requirements, the sale terms required the successful bidder to build and operate 80 miles of common carrier railroad through some of the most remote and undeveloped country in the state. The Fred Herrick Lumber Company and its Malheur Railroad initially won the bidding, only to lose it when a crash in the lumber market forced the company into insolvency. The Edward Hines Lumber Company of Chicago picked up the pieces, and fro m1929 until 1984, its subsidiary Oregon & Northwestern Railroad made a living hauling logs, lumber, and occasional livestock between Burns and Seneca, Oregon."--Provided by publisher

127 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

The story of one adventurer from Massachusetts who made the overland journey to the Rocky Mountains in 1832. A cousin of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, he joined his expedition and relates the tragedies and travails that plagued the expedition and its members as they passed through barren lands and encountered Native Americans.

87 pages ; 19 cm

Oregon: a bicentennial history examines the sweeping territorial expansion and complex pioneer settlement across a vast landscape fundamentally fractured by extreme climatic and topographical divides. Dodds details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the towering, volcanic spine of the Cascade Range—strictly dictated the bifurcation of human survival, permanently separating the dense, rain-drenched coastal rainforests and the fertile alluvial trough of the Willamette Valley from the sweeping, arid sagebrush steppes of the eastern high desert. By mapping the arduous overland migration that funneled thousands of exhausted pioneers into the lush western basins, the narrative highlights the immense physical labor required to carve an agricultural and timber-based empire from this demanding environment. The profound geographic disparities forced early homesteaders to adapt their lifeways to vastly different ecological realities, ranging from intensive valley farming and deepwater maritime extraction on the coast to precarious dryland ranching and mining on the unforgiving inland plains. Ultimately, this comprehensive historical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the immense physical scale and severe environmental dualities of the Pacific Northwest fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, multifaceted character of the Oregon frontier.

xiv, 240 pages, 8 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations ; 22 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.

Oregon is a landscape of brilliant waterfalls, towering volcanoes, productive river valleys, and far-reaching high deserts. It is also a land of stories. People have lived on the Oregon landscape for at least twelve thousand years, and during that time they have established communities, built railroads, harvested fish and timber, and made laws that both protected and threatened the land. Oregon, This Storied Land tells many of those stories, giving us a broad, sweeping history of a state that has resisted being made into a stereotype

xviii, 219 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Nash, a prominent London attorney, came to Oregon in 1877 to investigate possibilities for railroad building and land development. When he returned to England, he wrote this book, here reprinted with a foreword and notes. Wallis Nash, a native of England, was a Benton County lawyer and entrepreneur. He was on the initial Board of Regents for Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University).

xviii pages, 2 leaves, 285 pages including frontispiece, illustrations, plates, double map 20 cm

Fred John Splitstone’s Orcas, Gem of the San Juans chronicles the arduous pioneer settlement and localized agrarian subjugation of a profoundly isolated, horseshoe-shaped marine enclave dominated by the towering, impassable mass of Mount Constitution. The narrative maps how the severe environmental realities of this rugged insular topography—characterized by plunging deep-water fjords, dense coastal rainforests, and the treacherous, tide-ripped aquatic labyrinth of the surrounding Salish Sea—initially completely severed early homesteaders from the continental mainland. By detailing the grueling transition from precarious subsistence logging and dangerous inter-island canoe transit to the aggressive cultivation of fertile inland valleys for large-scale fruit orchards and the vital deployment of robust steamboat mosquito fleets, the text illustrates how physical and economic survival was strictly dictated by the necessity of mastering these formidable maritime and topographical extremes. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that systematically clearing the heavy timber of the island's interior and engineering specialized marine transit networks to conquer the profound geographical detachment of the archipelago were the absolute prerequisites for transforming a forbidding, mountainous wilderness into a thriving, self-sustaining agrarian anchor of the San Juan Islands.

xi, 96 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Presents a selection of vintage images culled from the archives of the Orcas Island Historical Society and Museum and a short history of Orcas Island. Orcas Island, the largest of the 172 islands in San Juan County, lies in the Salish Sea north of Puget Sound

128 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

In 1964 when the Vancouver Aquarium obtained its first killer whale, Moby Doll, the prevalent attitudes towards killer whales was that they were fierce and vicious man-eaters. Over the years, attitudes have begun to change, and orcas are now revered as loveable, intelligent creatures and iconic symbols of the marine environment. In January 2002, a young killer whale was discovered alone in the waters of Puget Sound near Seattle. Determining that the whale would not survive alone so far from home, a team of scientists captured "Springer" and transported her by boat north to her home range where she rejoined her family. At the same time Springer was making her historic journey, another lone whale turned up in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The people of Nootka Sound adopted "Luna" as their own, but he was a large, boisterous youngster who liked to cuddle boats and the government feared he would get into trouble. Another rescue was planned to return Luna to his family but this time there was no happy ending. In Operation Orca, winner of the 2008 Foreword Magazine Nature Book of the Year award, author Daniel Francis and long-time Vancouver Aquarium staff member Gil Hewlett give breadth to the complications, contradictions, and political posturing that twice engulfed the debate of whether to interfere or let nature take its course. Through the amazing story of these two "orphan" whales, Operation Orca tells the larger story of orcas in the Pacific Northwest, the people who have studied them and the transformation of the whale's image from killer to icon.

280 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 24 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

"When Eric A. Hegg rushed north to Alaska in 1897, he as a journeyman photographer, largely self-trained. He forced a sled load of photographic equipment across the coastal mountains in the dead of winter. He hiked out to the claims on Bonanza and Eldorado, and he poked his camera into the banks and bars and bordellos in Dawson. He rode a paddle-wheel steamer down the Yukon to the Bering and was on the dark sands of the beach at Home when the prospectors swirled gravel in their pans and worked their mechanical rockers. Most important, he was there, high on the Chilkoot Pass in the winter of 1897-98, as the dark-clad men climbed antlike up the frozen steps of The Scales under the burden of a year's supplies." -- amazon.com

213 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 22 x 27 cm

Richard T. Kennedy and Grechen F. Schmidt’s One hundred years of the "waterland" community: a history of Des Moines, Washington chronicles the maritime and civic evolution of the forested bluffs and sheltered shorelines along the eastern edge of Puget Sound. Set strategically midway between the rapidly expanding urban centers of Seattle and Tacoma, the narrative details how early homesteaders, loggers, and fishermen relied on the region's vital "mosquito fleet" steamers to overcome profound geographic isolation and establish viable coastal claims. By tracing the collaborative development of the town's defining waterfront, from primitive docks to a bustling recreational marina, the text reveals how these dispersed early residents forged tight-knit kinship networks through shared maritime labor and civic engagement. Ultimately, this local history documents how the cooperative stewardship of this dynamic shoreline successfully transformed a rugged, remote logging frontier into a resilient, highly connected residential enclave bound by its enduring identity as a "waterland" community.

316 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

""Our well beloved dead who died that we might live." In the town of Merritt, in British Columbia's Nicola Valley, stands a granite cenotaph erected in memory of 44 men who died soldiering in the First World War. Those men came from a Nicola Valley that had been suddenly and dramatically settled just a decade before by the will of railway executives and the arrival of British colliers. Twelve of those soldiers are the subject of these pages--and through them, we meet the men, women and children of the Nicola Valley, the dead and their survivors: the people who built and were built by a Canadian community that was also distinctly British Columbian."-- Provided by publisher

134 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm

"With evidence of human habitation dating back fifteen thousand years to the last ice age, British Columbia boasts a fascinating array of famous and lesser-known archaeological sites. Across the province, archaeologists are changing how archaeology is practised by working in partnership with Indigenous and other descendant communities to document important cultural sites. In this up-to-date overview, professional archaeologist Robert Muckle visits sites around the province to explain what archaeology is (and isn’t), how research is undertaken in this province, and what it contributes to our broader understanding of human history. Once upon This Land introduces readers to some of the most notable archaeological investigations, including footprints left in mud on Calvert Island thirteen thousand years ago, the remains of a large First Nations village near Lillooet, and the body of a man frozen in ice for centuries in the Tatshenshini region. He also investigates more recent phenomena, such as a fur-trade fort, remains of the gold rush, a World War I internment camp near Fernie, a Japanese logging camp in North Vancouver, shipwrecks, airplane crashes, and even the remnants of COVID-19 left behind in urban landfills."-- Provided by publisher

xii, 205 pages cm

Once Upon an Island by David Conover is a classic 1967 memoir chronicling the true story of a young couple who purchased Wallace Island in the Canadian Gulf Islands during the late 1940s. The book details David and Jeanne Conover's adventures, struggles, and eventual triumphs as they worked to transform the rugged, undeveloped land into a functioning summer vacation resort. Ultimately, it serves as an inspiring and humorous narrative for boaters and dreamers drawn to the trials and joys of escaping city life for a self-sufficient island existence.

242 pages illustrations, portraits 22 cm

Luckily for him, and for us, Emmett Watson's beat as a columnist for The Seattle Times required him to stay in touch with his beloved native city. In his daily meanderings, usually accompanied by his miniature poodle, Tiger, Watson saw much that is invisible to the rest of us. Of course, he was around longer than most of us, too--over eight decades, five of them as a newspaperman whose happy fate it had been to assay the crooked timber of humanity and reassure us of its worth. As he looked at Seattle, Watson discerned, with a geologist's eye, human fossils buried in layers of history here, there and everywhere. In this volume, a companion to his Digressions of a Native Son, published almost four decades ago, Watson brings to life some of the citizens Seattle should not forget, and, along the way, reminds us that a city is a human habitat whose history can properly be told only in the tale of its people.

xxiii, 166 pages ; 23 cm

"A fascinating collection of concise stories about twenty-one courageous, independent, and diverse women who shaped the history of Vancouver Island. From the lush rainforest of Clayoquot Sound to the bustling city streets of Victoria, Vancouver Island has been home to an astounding number of inspiring women. On Their Own Terms: True Stories of Trailblazing Women of Vancouver Island celebrates the achievements of twenty-one amazing heroines working in multiple fields, from world-famous artists to social activists to groundbreaking scientists and quietly defiant labourers. The diverse women in this engaging new collection include: - pioneer and midwife Tuwa 'hwiye Tusium Gollelim, Mary Ann Gyves; - world-renowned algae botanist Josephine Tilden; - undiscovered aviatrix Lilian Bland; - Vancouver Island's first African-Canadian teacher, Emma Stark; and - entrepreneur and bounty hunter Ada Annie Rae-Arthur, better known as Cougar Annie. On Their Own Terms will delight and empower anyone looking for true stories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century women who confronted uncertainty, challenged gender norms, and excelled in their respective vocations. Whether you are an entrepreneur, an educator, a rebellious spirit, or an armchair adventurer, these incredible women who thrived on Vancouver Island will captivate you."-- Provided by publisher

141 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

On the Shady Side: Vancouver, 1886-1914 by Betty Keller is a 1986 historical account published by Horsdal & Schubart that explores the gritty, illicit underbelly of British Columbia's largest city during its formative decades. The book chronicles Vancouver's rapid evolution from a rowdy frontier sawmill settlement into a booming Pacific port, focusing specifically on the vice, crime, and political corruption that accompanied this explosive growth. Keller meticulously details the world of bootleggers, gamblers, opium dens, and brothels, alongside the often-complicit early police forces and municipal officials operating prior to World War I. Ultimately, it serves as an entertaining and highly informative social history that looks beyond traditional civic boosterism to reveal the rugged, colorful, and controversial realities of early urban development in the Canadian Pacific Northwest.

ix, 121 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm