Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

Authored by longtime resident and community historian Margaret Philbrick, A Bit Off Center presents a personal, highly localized history of Orcas Island in Washington's San Juan archipelago. Drawing on vintage photographs, maps, and oral recollections, the book chronicles the development of local landmarks, marine transport, small cottage industries, and the eccentric characters who anchored early island life. Through intimate vignettes of community hubs like the Orcas Hotel and Grindstone Harbor, the text captures the peculiar charm and texture of self-reliant island living. A keen insight drawn from the work is how insular communities derive their unique resilience from eccentricity; by documenting the colorful, non-conformist personalities that populated the margins of society, the narrative reveals that living "off center" was not just a geographic descriptor, but a vital cultural ethos that allowed isolated pioneers to thrive.

97 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm

"Working with Commander Porcher's manuscript journal, now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection of Yale University, as well as other documents of the time, editor Smith has conjured an era through the unique voice of one of its standard bearers. Porcher's journal reveals a man who strived to do his duty by the lights of the British Empire, then at full bloom but - caught between vulnerable Russian America to the north, and the rambunctious and expanding United States to the south, and the French virtually everywhere - in slightly precarious position on North America's Pacific coast

xvii, 172 pages, approximately [52] leaves of plates : illustrations (some color), map ; 27 cm

Authored by Helen Huson Olsen and Effie DeForest Boyer Knowlton, Tales from a Tahuya Log: Second Growth preserves the rustic folklore, pioneer genealogy, and personal recollections of early settlement along the Tahuya Peninsula on Washington's Hood Canal. The book captures the unglamorous day-to-day realities of homesteading, logging, and raising families in a densely forested, isolated region where neighbors were separated by miles of wilderness rather than paved roads. Through charming anecdotes and local family histories, the text chronicles how a distinct, resilient community was hewed out of the second-growth timberland. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the concept of "second growth" serves as an apt metaphor for the psychological landscape of frontier children; just as new trees vigorously sprouted from the logged stumps of the original forest, the second generation of settlers had to grow sturdy and resourceful in the literal shadow of their parents' exhausting labor.

159 pages : illustrations, map ; 28 cm

"By focusing on the history of control over productive resources (in this case salmon, methods of harvest, processing, capital investment, and markets) Boxberger shows how the Lummi slid from independence and self-sufficiency to dependency, underdevelopment, and poverty. . . . Not only is it an excellent, in-depth study of the Lummi case, it can also serve as a metaphor for the larger question of Native American treaty rights and the resource provisions of agreements." --Pacific Historical Review

xviii, 212 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Greene (research historian, National Park Service) recounts the fighting retreat of the nontreaty Nez Perces, including Chief Joseph, across nearly 1,000 miles of Pacific Northwest wilderness. Greene draws from both U.S. Army and Nez Perce sources to explain their circuitous route through Yellowstone National Park and their attempts to seek refuge among the Crow Indians. Twenty-six illustrations and photographs and 16 maps are included. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

xix, 554 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

A package of 5 black & white maps of historic and current Idaho. Shown on the maps are early towns, military roads, stage stations, and early forts. Map 1 side 1 Idaho 1879, side 2, Idaho 1883. Map 2 side 1 Idaho 1895, side 2 Idaho 1912. Map 3 northern Idaho 1895 with overlay of current road system. Map 4 is southwest Idaho 1895, with overlay. Map 5 is southeast Idaho 1895 with overlay.

7 maps on 5 sheets : both sides ; sheets 54 x 36 cm or smaller, folded in envelope 24 x 16 cm

A collection of personal essays from the author's middle-age surprise of finding herself at home in the intermountain region of southeastern Idaho

[6], 119, [2] pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

"Every one of these parks... is a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of every hue, the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings," wrote John Muir, describing his ascent of Washington's Mount Rainier, the highest peak in the Cascade Mountains. So impressed was Muir with the beauty of Rainier's meadows and forests that he joined others in calling for the establishment of a national park. Coinciding with this year's centennial of the founding of Mount Rainier National Park is a publication of a comprehensive new flora for the Park. Flora of Mount Rainier National Park provides a complete listing of the 866 species of native and introduced plants found in the Park, with keys, line drawings, and descriptions for identification, as well as a guide to plant location. It includes information on the Park's natural history, as well as sections on botanical exploration, rare plants, and the ecological impact of the Park's 2 million annual visitors. This authoritative treatment of the Park's flora offers a complete reference and field guide for visitors, as well as naturalists, resource managers, and conservationists. It will prove invaluable to professional and amateur students of Northwest flora.

vi, 506 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

The remarkable Pacific temperate rainforest has become an endangered landscape, rarer than even the embattled tropical rainforest. In Last Stands, award-winning environmental writer Larry Pynn plunges into coastal forests from California to Alaska to explore this unique ecosystem and the complex factors that threaten it. Whether standing with new-age loggers as they toil beneath the churning blades of a heli-logging operation, witnessing the wolverine's legendary ferocity, bounding along in the back of a pickup with a couple of bear hunters, or embarking on a week-long solo hike through an uncharted wilderness, Pynn's approach to understanding North America's temperate rainforest--and the creatures and people connected to it--is as diverse and unconventional as the forest itself. The result is a fascinating book, one part impassioned travelogue and one part natural history. Cathedral, cash crop, the Earth's respiratory system: the rainforest is all this and more. The incalculable wealth and magnificence of these last stands spring forth in this savvy, down-to-earth chronicle.

xi, 212 pages : map ; 23 cm

As the longest serving Justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, William O. Douglas was known for writing a host of dissenting opinions. He was also a prolific writer off the bench, a man whose work was as much concerned with nature as with law. This collection brings together writings that represent the wide range of Douglas's interests. It includes selections from his autobiographical and political books, and opinions from landmark cases—all reflecting not only his love of justice but also his roots in the Northwest and his lifelong commitment to the environment. Several selections from Douglas's first book Of Men and Mountains portray his abiding love of the outdoors—particularly the Northern Cascades—and the rugged people who live there. These personal writings warmly recall events of his youth and celebrate the power of the mountains to renew the human spirit. Other selections evoke Douglas's professional activities: as a New Deal insider and Supreme Court Justice, a champion of civil liberties and the rights of minorities, a strong internationalist, and an unflagging supporter of environmental issues. These latter writings include passages from My Wilderness and his dissenting opinion in Sierra Club v. Morton arguing that trees have legal standing to bring lawsuits. These writings demonstrate that Douglas never shied from controversy—whether over interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment or the choice between flies and bait for trout fishing—and offer inspiration for both environmentalists and all who yearn for a more just society. Whether extolling the joys of the wild or defending the rights of citizens, Douglas shows in this work that he truly was Nature's Justice—and one of a kind.

x, 310 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Between 1871 and 1887, Duniway, a leader in the woman suffrage movement, chronicled this "true history" in the pages of The New Northwest, one of the few newspapers in the nation devoted to woman's advancement. With its motto of "Free Speech, Free Press, Free People," Duniway's weekly reform journal aimed to expose and combat social injustice of all kinds. Yours for Liberty, the first published volume of Duniway's writings from The New Northwest, provides a vivid portrait of this pioneering suffragist and her work. The collected essays, news reports, and editorial and travel correspondence reveal her strong, often controversial convictions. Together, the nearly three hundred selections chronicle a fascinating and turbulent era when traditional social attitudes and institutions were being challenged, both in the Pacific Northwest and across the nation. Based in Portland, Oregon, far removed from the center of reform movements in the East, The New Northwest served as a forum for discussions of issues as varied as treatment of the Chinese, policies relating to American Indians, the rights and legal status of women, Temperance and Prohibition, and the vagaries of religion. As a suffragist editor, Duniway wrote to persuade and inform her readers. Still, The New Northwest never failed to entertain. Duniway's wit and love of adventure are evident in lively tales of attending seances, falling off stagecoaches, being egged and hung in effigy, and barnstorming the Pacific Northwest in the company of Susan B. Anthony. In their introductory essay, Jean Ward and Elaine Maveety provide a context for Duniway's tireless fight for reform and examine her remarkable career as an editor, writer, and suffragist.

307 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Two boys on a bike trip are sure to find adventure. Send them off into the wilds of the American West, and it's a safe bet adventure will find them. In 1909, Vic McDaniel and Ray Francisco, just out of high school, set out from Santa Rosa, California, on second-hand bikes, bound for the great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. Traveling on dusty roads, roads of logs, of planks, even of corn stalks, and often no roads at all, they pedaled, pushed, and walked a thousand miles north for 54 days. With excitement in their hearts and a good luck billiken in their bedroll, they started out with only $5.65 between them. Camp was wherever, whenever the sun was gone; food was an occasional meal from a kindly farm wife and what they could fish, hunt, or glean. But they learned that all strangers were not kind, not even close. Vic and Ray reported their adventures to their home-town newspaper. And what adventures they had. They met their share of memorable characters, from a young girl who stole Ray's heart to a pin-striped hustler who tried to pick Vic's pocket. They traveled paths beside railroad tracks, fought their way around boulders and up brushy hillsides, and crossed rivers layered with salmon. They survived a grizzly's nocturnal visit and the sudden terror of a snake bite. They held their breaths crossing railroad trestles over treacherous canyons, and discovered that a railroad tunnel doesn't offer safe passage when you're halfway through and a train comes along. Evelyn Gibb, daughter of one of the cyclists, has drawn on her father's recollections to tell this incredible adventure in his voice. Winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Nonfiction Book Award, Two Wheels North is a captivating account of a journey that today we can only dream about — one that finds two boys on the road not only to Seattle, but also to manhood. Evelyn McDaniel Gibb is an award-winning writer whose stories and articles have appeared in dozens of magazines and in the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. She lives in Sedro Woolley, Washington, in the foothills of the North Cascades.

viii, 181 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Oregon's historic house museums are time capsules that preserve our past domestic life. As Kathleen Wiederhold shows in this informative and entertaining guide, historic houses provide a place to experience the architecture and artifacts of the most intimate part of our lives, the home. Each of the historic house museums featured is unique in its place and time. The book covers houses built from 1841 to 1936, from a hewn log cabin in the high desert to a grand mansion in the state's most populated city. The houses, many of which are on the National Register of Historic Places, span the economic spectrum from poor to wealthy, and include those belonging to noteworthy Oregonians, from John McLoughlin to Wayne Morse. All are open to the public. The author introduces readers to more than fifty historic house museums in towns and cities from Astoria to Baker City. Each profile includes: a fascinating history of the people who built and lived in the house, detailed descriptions of exterior and interior features, including architectural styles, floorplans, and furnishings, a step-by-step tour of the house with tips on what to see, and visitor information such as directions, operating hours, and nearby attractions. Historic house museums showcase both ordinary and unusual objects that Oregonians used in everyday life. They provide glimpses of people's lives in the places where they lived. They also reflect on the course of the state's settlement and development. this engaging guide explains these dwellings and tells their stories. Photographs of both the exteriors and interiors bring the houses alive. For history buffs, old house enthusiasts, antique aficionados, and cultural tourists, this book is an excellent introduction to Oregon's heritage houses. Kathleen M. Wiederhold is a scholar of and an advocate for Oregon's courthouses. She has spent 18 years researching historic buildings and town histories. She has an extensive collection of courthouse memorabilia. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington.

xv, 286 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

The Pacific Northwest is water country. This far corner of the world is distinguished and defined by rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and an ocean. Where there is so much water, there's fishing. And where there's fishing, there is bound to be writing about fishing because, as Thomas McGuane observed, "you can't say enough about it." Now there's a book for people who can't read enough about it either. Fishing the Northwest collects stories and essays by twenty-two of the best angling writers in the region. Veteran flyfisher Love has combed the vast literature on angling to create an exciting blend of subjects and styles that puts readers in the water next to fishing authors of great renown as well as noteworthy newer voices. Included are famous early writers like Zane Grey, who frequented Northwest rivers, and Roderick Haig-Brown, who defined angling literature for the region. Also spotlighted is a new wave of excellent writing that has exploded in the Northwest over the past two decades, calling on a host of gifted authors like Ted Leeson and Jessica Maxwell--one of several women who prove that it's no longer just a man's preserve. The book ranges from Alaska to the Rogue River in southern Oregon, the Olympic Mountains and Vancouver Island to the Continental Divide in Montana. From the advice of angling eminence Enos Bradner to the spirited fiction of Ken Kesey, from Robin Carey's account of getting acquainted with a new river to Lorian Hemingway's first flyfishing adventure, Fishing the Northwest is the ultimate reader for anyone who, in Norman Maclean's famous words, is "haunted by waters." Even if you've never felt a tug on a line, you'll discover in this book that some of the Northwest's best writing flows straight from its rivers. All royalties from Fishing the Northwest will be donated to the Pacific Rivers Council, a non-profit conservation organization dedicated to restoring, protecting, and enhancing American rivers.

232 pages ; 24 cm.

For the Clackamas Chinook Indians, these words signaled the end of a myth recital. Melville Jacobs spent a lifetime recording traditional stories and studying the life ways of those who told them. An anthropologist and folklorist, Jacobs (1902-1971) made it his life's work to preserve and interpret the fast-disappearing languages and traditions of the Indian peoples of Oregon and Washington. This volume presents an introduction to Jacobs's seminal research and provides an engaging selection of the myths and tales that he painstakingly collected. In their introduction, the editors provide an overview of Jacobs's remarkable life and career. A professor at the University of Washington, Jacobs, like his mentor Franz Boas, spent months in the field, seeking out and interviewing Native people. A selection of Jacobs's articles and essays on Northwest Indian oral traditions introduce his theory and method of folklore research. In addition to his own original writings, this volume gathers eighteen stories collected and translated by Jacobs. Eight of the stories include his extensive interpretations, several of which are published here for the first time. The stories represent the range of genres that Jacobs collected and are drawn from many of the Native groups with which he worked, including Chinook, Kalapuya, Sahaptin, and Coos. All the stories were originally collected in the Native languages and translated into English with help from Jacobs's Indian consultants. Making possible the scholarly understanding and appreciation of Native folk literature was Melville Jacobs's greatest challenge. This volume in the Northwest Readers series is evidence of his success. It offers a valuable introduction to Jacobs's work for anyone interested in the rich folklore of Northwest Indians, as well as for students and scholars of American Indian oral traditions and their interpretation.

x, 310 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Milton Parent’s Circle of Silver: A History of the Lardeau and Trout Lake provides an exhaustive chronicle of the hard-rock silver and lead mining rushes that swept the northern Lardeau district during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Parent traces how remote boomtown settlements—most notably Trout Lake City, Ferguson, and Camborne—were rapidly carved from dense mountain forests along the Incomappleux (Fish) River and Lardeau River drainages. The text details the complex transportation lifelines required to support isolated mining camps, documenting the packaging of ore by pack trains over precipitous mountain passes, the construction of the Arrowhead and Kootenay railway branch, and the essential steamship connection at the head of Northeast Arm at Beaton that barged ore down to southern smelters. Richly supported by mining company records, claim maps, and archival photographs, the book documents both the frenzy and inevitable decline of an iconic interior mining frontier.

392 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 29 cm

An amusing account of a 50-something woman living alone for a year in a rural cabin on a Puget Sound island. During her adventure she finds out more than she bargained for about pesky raccoons, wacky plumbing, foot infections, capricious weather, the effects of loneliness...and knowing herself.

170 pages ; 22 cm

When author Diane Josephy Peavey first arrived in south-central Idaho twenty years ago, she did not know it was possible to become as connected to a place as she is now, nor, she claims, did she understand the "meaning of love, of home, of commitment. That would come to me here, 24 dirt-road miles from town." Story by story, readers will pass through the seasons of a ranching life, discovering the power of a landscape that inspires passion in so many. Book jacket

xvi, 239 pages ; 23 cm

A history of the development of a section of Southeastern Idaho which was one of the main transportation routes from Salt Lake City to the gold fields as well as a rich agricultural area. A good, bad and ugly history of a small Idaho Welsh settlement. The frontier between Mormon and Gentile, Saint and sinner. A place once advertised where a woman could shoot her husband and never spend a day in jail.The Presbyterian tolled for an "innocent" young Michael Murphy, the first man legally hanged in Idaho. Charles Fremont looked from Malad towards Great Salt Lake. They almost drowned exploring from a rubber boat.

x, 230 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm

Published by the Island County Historical Society and authored by early pioneer descendant George Albert Kellogg, A History of Whidbey's Island, State of Washington chronicles the foundational decades of Puget Sound's largest island through the eyes of those who settled it. The book details the arrival of the first European-American homesteaders, maritime trading exploits, encounters with local Indigenous populations, and the arduous establishment of agriculture and civic infrastructure across the mid-to-late 19th century. Drawing on firsthand accounts, local lore, and early archival records, the text preserves the gritty, self-reliant spirit of a community forged in maritime isolation. A keen insight drawn from the work is how pioneer-authored local histories functioned as acts of cultural legitimation; by meticulously recording the trials of early settlement, authors like Kellogg sought to rapidly replace a deep, ancient indigenous geography with a heroic, permanent Anglo-American narrative of progress.

183 pages : maps, portrait ; 21 cm

Ron Strickland’s oral histories recover a part of the original Northwest character that is rapidly disappearing. In River Pigs and Cayuses, he gathers stories from old-timers in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Brimming with lively accounts both humorous and poignant, the book illuminates cadences and traditions that Strickland hopes will survive long after the storytellers are gone. Here a moonshiner, a fish pirate, a timber cruiser, a branding iron maker, a smoke jumper, a frontier bride, and 25 other fascinating individuals speak vividly, revealing their personal histories in their own words. Strickland introduces each story, providing information on the teller and placing the story in context. In telling their own stories, his subjects speak to the diversity of life and labor in the Northwest. A short glossary enhances the “listening” experience, as do Strickland's own photographs of the storytellers. In a new introduction, William Kittredge notes that Strickland’s interviewees are most passionate when speaking of their survival in the work-a-day world, sustained both by their livelihoods and by the solace of companionship. “What we hear echoing over and again in these voices,” Kittredge writes, “is pride, at having managed difficult lives, and having along the way earned independence, all the individuality they could manage, and an unapologetic sense of self.”

xx, 155 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Compiled and edited by Mildred Harmon Salazar, Pioneer History of North Lincoln County, Oregon, Volume III preserves the oral traditions, genealogical records, and firsthand accounts of the early homesteaders, loggers, and coastal traders who settled Oregon's rugged central coast. The volume details the immense challenges of carving out a living amid dense coastal forests, treacherous bar crossings, and geographic isolation before the arrival of modern highways. Through collected memoirs, family trees, and vintage photographs, the text captures the gritty everyday realities of building community infrastructure along a dramatic and unforgiving shoreline. A keen insight drawn from the work is how community-compiled pioneer histories serve as vital grassroots archives that rescue ordinary working lives from historical obscurity; by gathering stories directly from aging settlers, the volume reveals that the true foundation of coastal development was built not by corporate industrialists, but by the quiet, unyielding persistence of families adapting to an untamed maritime frontier.

x, 212 pages : illustrations

Exploring Washington’s Past tells the state’s story in terms of where to go and what to see. With words, photographs, and maps, the authors evoke the cultural landscape and portray Washington’s people and events from the days of the fur trade and pioneer settlement to the recent past. Capsule descriptions of small communities -- from Altoona to Zillah -- are interwoven with those of better known cities, and eastern and western Washington receive equal attention. More than two hundred photographs portray our historical landscape through images of today intermixed with a sampling of the past. This book will be an indispensable guide for residents, tourists, and armchair travelers.

xiii, 543 pages : illustrations, maps (some color) ; 26 cm

Published in local editions, Leonore Gale Barette’s Thumbpapers: Sketches of Pioneer Days offers a charming and intimate collection of vignettes capturing the daily struggles, simple pleasures, and quiet resilience of early settlers in the Pacific Northwest. The book weaves together personal reminiscences and local folklore to illustrate how isolated frontier communities banded together to build homes, schools, and civic life amidst vast wilderness. Through its evocative, unpretentious prose, the text preserves the texture of a bygone era before industrialization reshaped the rural landscape. A keen insight drawn from the work is how domestic and everyday details—rather than grand political milestones—serve as the true bedrock of historical memory; by focusing on the small, routine friction of pioneer housekeeping and community socializing, the narrative reveals that civilization on the frontier was sustained just as much by ordinary human connection as it was by physical survival.

xi, 67 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Published in regional biographical editions by Florence Westover Bond, Chief Seattle, Man of Vision explores the life, diplomacy, and complex legacy of the mid-19th-century Duwamish and Suquamish leader whose name became synonymous with the city of Seattle. The book details his strategic efforts to navigate the turbulent arrival of European-American settlers, maintain peace during the devastating conflicts of the 1850s, and protect the sovereign interests of his people amidst aggressive territorial displacement. Drawing on historical records and regional oral traditions, the text contrasts the popular, romanticized myth of the tragic vanishing Indian with the reality of a pragmatic political strategist. A keen insight drawn from the work is how Chief Seattle’s famous, oft-romanticized speech was not a surrender to inevitability, but a brilliant act of long-term rhetorical positioning; by binding the spiritual destiny of the white settlers to the sacred ancestral land of the tribes, he sought to morally obligate the colonizers to respect native memory even as their physical presence was being dismantled.

xiv, 139 pages ; 21 cm