Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

Writing in the early years of the 20th century, novelist Eva Emery Dye captured the imagination of American readers with her epic accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Oregon Trail, and the conquest of the American West. Brimming with adventure, drama, and romance, her books helped to shape an entire generation's understanding of American history and Manifest Destiny. In this first biography of Dye, Sheri Bartlett Browne chronicles the life of one of Oregon's most successful early writers. Drawing on previously unknown letters and diaries, Browne examines Dye's determination to write historical fiction, the history of her involvement in the suffrage movement, and her lifelong promotion of education through the Chautauqua movement. Dye is best remembered for The Conquest, one of the first fictional works to popularize (and romanticize) the Lewis and Clark Expedition, in which she introduced a new American heroine, Sacagawea. Although the book's portrayal enhanced the young Shoshone's role, it was Dye's later efforts to memorialize her with statues and speeches that turned Sacagawea into an American icon. Dye's most extensive project was a historical novel recounting the achievements of 19th century American missionaries in Hawaii. Completed in the 1920s but never published, her manuscript promoted a controversial view of American influence in Hawaii. Dye wrote one last book, The Soul of America, which examined the accomplishments and perseverance of pioneer women. Eva Emery Dye: Romance with the West offers a fascinating look at a figure once prominent in literary and suffrage circles in the Pacific Northwest, and highlights the significance of family and education in women's lives at the turn of the twentieth century.

vi, 186 pages ; 23 cm

Since its original publication in 1945, this small classic has acquired a new audience concerned with living in harmony with the environment and interested in the particularly intimate relationship of Native Americans to the land. This survey of the use of plants by Native Americans in western Washington describes the ways in which more than 150 species served as food and medicine, and were used for the manufacture of clothes and other objects. Since its original publication in 1945, this small classic has acquired a new audience concerned with living in harmony with the environment and interested in the particularly intimate relationship of Native Americans to the land. This survey of the use of plants by Native Americans in western Washington describes the ways in which more than 150 species served as food and medicine, and were used for the manufacture of clothes and other objects.

71 pages : illustrations, map ; 27 cm

"Very little has been published until now on the ethnobotany of western Oregon indigenous peoples. Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians documents the use of plants by these closely-related coastal tribes, covering a geographical area that extends roughly from Cape Perpetua on the central coast, south to the Coquille River, and from the Coast Range west to the Pacific shore. With a focus on native plants and their traditional uses, it also includes mention of farming crops, as well as the highly invasive Himalayan blackberry, which some Oregon coast Indians called the 'white man{u2019}s berry.' The cultures of the Coos Bay, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw are distinct from the Athabaskan speaking people to the south, and the Alsea to the north. Today, many tribal members are reviving ancient arts of basket weaving and woodworking, and many now participate in annual intertribal canoe events. Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians contributes to this cultural renaissance by filling an important gap in the historical record. It is an invaluable resource for anyone who wishes to learn about the indigenous cultures of the central and southern Oregon coast, as well as those who are interested in Pacific Northwest plants and their cultural uses."--Publisher's website

xv, 147 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Esquimalt Naval Base: A History of Its Work and Its Defences by Major F. V. Longstaff is a detailed 1941 historical account chronicling the establishment, growth, and strategic significance of the British and Canadian naval presence on Vancouver Island. The book explores the evolution of the base from its early days in the 19th century through the World Wars, offering an in-depth look at its fortifications, engineering achievements, and role in Pacific maritime defense.

189 pages frontispiece, XII plates on 6 leaves 23 cm

Esquimalt: Place of Shoaling Waters by Leigh Burpee Robinson is a 1947 local history detailing the early settlement and maritime evolution of Esquimalt, British Columbia. The book chronicles the area's transformation from its origins as a Salish First Nations home and Hudson's Bay Company property into Canada's vital western naval base. Through rich historical detail and illustrations by B. Digby Robinson, the author explores the military and community developments that firmly established Esquimalt's significance on the Pacific Coast.

1 online resource (128 pages)

Twenty years ago, two empty-nesters with a love of the outdoors stumbled upon a vacant beach house on a small island in Clayoquot Sound, part of an off-grid, ten-acre stretch nestled within a provincial park reserve. Our Stolen Years in Clayoquot Sound is an extended love letter to this place, chronicling the decade John and Bea Dowd spent as year-round caretakers of the property. Told with humour and heart in alternating voices, and lavishly illustrated throughout with stunning natural photography, this book a story of joyful solitude, of living in harmony with wildlife and respecting the forces of nature. It is about the fleeting definition of home and family, and about creating community in the wilderness. Above all, it is a tribute to an achingly beautiful, fragile place.

309 pages : color illustrations ; 26 cm

xi, 287 pages ; 24 cm

92, [6] pages : illustrations, portraits ; 21 cm

Edited papers of the one-day symposium held on February 18, 1984, at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, together with the bibliography of the E.G. Chuinard collection of Lewis and Clark materials at the Lewis and Clark College and housed in the Rare Book Room of the Aubrey Watzek Library. This collection consists of more than 370 items of rare books, journals, pamphlets, and reprints, some dating to the decade following Lewis and Clark's successful completion of their epic journey in 1806

x, 72 pages, [1] folded leaf : facsimiles, 1 map ; 23 cm

This project focused on researching approximately 100 liturgical textiles in the collection of St. John the Divine Anglican Church in Yale, BC. St. John the Divine is one of the oldest churches in the province, and many of the handmade textiles appear to date back to the time of its origins in the 1860s. The Church is now de-sanctified and designated as a Provincial Heritage Site. The Church was associated with the All Hallows Anglican girls school, which operated in Yale from 1884 to 1920. Part of the research concentrated on the production of textiles for the Church by the faculty and students of the school. Research included an analysis of the technical construction of the textiles to help determine their origins. The study of the St. John the Divine collection was contextualized within a broader history of the production of Anglican liturgical textiles, particularly in Western Canada. Comparisons were made between the Yale pieces and those from other sites. Oral history interviews with members of Anglican textile guilds, sanctuary committees, and descendants of students from All Hallows School helped fill out the research.

52 p. : ill., port. (some col.) ; 28 cm.

Primarily a collection of Brock Evans' contemporaneous writings, including witness testimony, diary entries, and speeches, Endless Pressure Endlessly Applied highlights and documents his 50-year career as a leader in the environmental movement

491 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits (some color) ; 27 x 28 cm

For the first time, everything you always wanted to know about BC is gathered together in one place! The Encyclopedia of British Columbia is the definitive reference work on BC. With more than 4,000 entries and hundreds of photos, maps, tables and charts, the EBC is the source of readable and authoritative information on all the significant BC people, places and things that you would currently have to search a vast library to find. What makes the EBC even better is the wealth of special local information and BC lore - all those details that make BC the weird and wonderful place it is. The EBC was conceived and compiled by Harbour Publishing, an award-winning, independent, 100% BC-owned company, with advice and assistance from more than 200 British Columbians. It is indispensable at home, at school, in the office - everywhere comprehensive, authoritative, concise information about BC is needed.

xviii, 806 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 29 cm + 1 computer optical disc (4 3/4 in.)

Authored by historians Carlos A. Schwantes and Evelyne Pickett, Encounters with a Distant Land: Exploration and the Great Northwest examines the centuries-long process by which fur traders, maritime explorers, and overland expeditions mapped and integrated the Pacific Northwest into the global consciousness. The book weaves together historical journals, rare maps, and firsthand exploration accounts to trace how distant empires and ambitious individuals conceptualized and claimed a rugged, uncharted wilderness. Through these documented journeys, the text illustrates the profound friction between the romanticized fantasies of early explorers and the harsh geographic realities they encountered on the ground. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the act of cartographic exploration was fundamentally an exercise in imperial imagination before it was an administrative reality; by projecting European political boundaries and commercial grids onto vast native landscapes long before permanent settlement, mapmakers and explorers successfully colonized the region's geography in the abstract years before governments ever established physical control.

xii, 220 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

The southern Gulf Islands between Nanaimo and Victoria are among British Columbia's greatest scenic treasures, projecting an appeal so powerful as to make nesomanes (island lovers) of the most unromantic souls. Ranging in size from Saltspring (pop. 12,000) to unoccupied D'arcy, they first began to attract European settlers in 1859 and have been home to a special breed of freedom-loving denizen ever since. Author David A.E. Spalding and photographer Kevin Oke are both members of this unique tribe and in this book pay tribute to their chosen region with the sensitivity and insider knowledge only long-time residents can provide. Brimming with gorgeous colour photographs by Oke, Enchanted Isles begins with a historic overview detailing how the islands served as a favoured hideaway of some of BC's most distinguished eccentrics. Remittance men and other escapees from British stuffiness form one stream of islanders, but there have been many others. A census of Saltspring in 1895 included a Patagonian, Germans, Portuguese, Hawaiians, Americans, Shetlanders and Scandinavians. Today you may expect to find individuals from virtually anywhere in the world. Enchanted Isles showcases local wildlife, captures local character and history and offers insider tips for visitors. It is a spectacular coffee-table book that shows why the Gulf Islands rank with Whistler and the Pacific Rim as one of the most popular tourist destinations in BC.

144 p. : col. ill. ; 29 cm.

Published by Fernando Monge, En la costa de la niebla: el paisaje y el discurso etnográfico ilustrado de la expedición Malaspina en el Pacífico examines the late 18th-century scientific voyage led by Alejandro Malaspina along the fog-shrouded Pacific Northwest coast. The book analyzes the intricate intersection of Enlightenment-era exploration, landscape representation, and the visual ethnography captured by artists and naturalists documenting indigenous societies from Alaska down to the Spanish colonial outposts. Through a close reading of historical journals and newly contextualized illustrations, the text reveals how imperial ambition sought to categorize and control remote foreign geographies through the dual lens of science and art. A keen insight drawn from the work is how Enlightenment science in the Pacific was never truly neutral; rather, the detailed cataloging of local native cultures and misty coastlines served as an aesthetic tool of Spanish territorial claim-making, transforming indigenous homelands into legible imperial commodities.

238 pages ; 24 cm

Empty Nets is a disturbing history of broken promises and justice delayed. It chronicles the Columbia River Indians' fight to maintain their livelihood and culture in the face of an indifferent federal bureaucracy and hostile state governments. In 1939, the U.S. Government promised to provide Columbia River Indians with replacements for traditional fishing sites flooded in the backwater of the Bonneville Dam. Roberta Ulrich recounts the Indians' decades-long struggle, in the courts and on the river, to persuade the government to keep its promise. From the beginning, the battle was intertwined with the tribes’ larger effort to assert treaty-guaranteed fishing rights. Ulrich deftly examines a host of other issues—including declining salmon runs, industrial development, tribal self-government, and recreation—that became enmeshed in the tribes’ pursuit of justice. Her broad and incisive account ranges from descriptions of the dam’s disastrous effects on a salmon-dependent culture to portraits of the plights of individual Indian families. Descendants of those to whom the promise was made and activists who have spent their lives working to acquire the sites reveal the remarkable patience and resilience of the Columbia River Indians. As Ulrich notes in a new epilogue to Empty Nets, the story continues to the present. With most of the replacement fishing sites now completed, the government’s promise will finally be fulfilled in this new century.

vii, 254 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm.

xiii, 685 pages illustrations, maps 24 cm

Traces the social and economic growth of the Pacific Northwest from the time of the aboriginal cultures

xiii, 654 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Marks the bicentennial of Astoria in 2011. Each of nine essays presents a literary biography of a figure who looms large in Astoria's history, from Comcomly, the powerful, one-eyed leader of the Chinook Tribe when Lewis and Clark arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805, to the “Salmon Kings”, who capitalized on the region's natural bounty from the 1870s to the 1910s.

272 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Not all of Oregon’s pioneers were Christian farmers or bachelor prospectors. Indeed, many of the first brick buildings on Oregon’s newly platted Main Streets were built by Jewish merchants whose services were essential to town founding and growth. In Embracing a Western Identity, Ellen Eisenberg places Jewish history in the larger context of western narratives, challenging the traditional view that the “authentic” North American Jewish experience stems from New York. The westward paths of Jewish Oregonians and their experiences of place shaped the communities, institutions, and identities they created, distinguishing them from other American Jewish communities. Eisenberg traces the Oregon Jewish experience from its pioneer beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to the highly concentrated Portland communities of the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on extensive archival resources at the Oregon Jewish Museum, this historical commentary explores patterns of migration and settlement, the place of Jews in the state’s ethnic landscape, their engagement in politics, the development of institutions, and their relationship to Zionism. Departing from familiar treatments of the Jewish experience, Embracing a Western Identity provides a critical look at the impact of place and opportunity upon the identities of migrants both as Oregonians and as American Jews. Readers and scholars interested in western history—religious, ethnic, expansionist, and otherwise—will enjoy Eisenberg’s accessible writing style and rich photograph collection.

x, 292 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

This is the first book to look at the life and times of Elise Olmstead, wife of Roy Olmstead, Seattle's notorious "Gentlman Bootlegger." The newspapers crowned her Seattle's "Queen of the Bootleggers" during Prohibition and she became an endless object of fascination, speculation and interest for reporters. It sold newspapers. But what was myth and what was merely mystery? Did she leave behind a dark secret when she came from England to Canada? Did she illegally enter the U.S.? Was she an informer for Prohibition agents before she married, or, did she become the brains of Roy's business after? Was it true that she used her radio show to send coded messages to Roy's rum-running ships while reading bedtime stories for children over the air? Who was the real Elise? On trial with Roy and dozens of her cohorts for violating Prohibition laws, she was acquitted, but Roy went to jail for four years. How did she survive? Why didn't their marriage last? This is the true story of an independent woman, ahead of her time, an entrepreneur running a radio station and bringing live orchestra music to the airwaves. An intensely private and secretive person, Elise's story has never been fully or accurately told until now. back cover

280 pages, 18 pages of plates (pages 80-97) : black and white portraits, facsimiles, photographs ; 23 cm

Gene Harris, the “Blues Man From Boise,” as the Wall Street Journal once called him, died at the start of a new millennium, but he left a legacy of music that will outlive us all. He played on more than 80 recordings and shared the stage or recording studio with many legends and luminaries. Gene's wife, Janie, and veteran writer Bob Evancho detail the career of this gifted entertainer.

279 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits (some color) ; 21 x 26 cm

Conde Balcom McCullough ranks as a modern bridge builder of national and international acclaim. This first major study of McCullough traces the Professional life of a brilliant engineer and builder renowned for his elegant, cost-efficient, custom-designed spans. McCullough's legacy lies in the nearly 600 bridges he and his staff designed and built in Oregon during the years between the two world wars, most notably several beautiful bridges along the Oregon Coast Highway, bridges he called "jeweled clasps in a wonderful string of pearls." Trained as a civil engineer, McCullough came to Oregon in 1916, drawn by the state's dire need for bridges and its drive to "lift its feet out of the winter's mud and summer's dust." After developing the engineering program at Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University), McCullough was named the state's bridge engineer. He became an impassioned promoter of state-sponsored bridge building that incorporated engineering efficiency with economic practicality and aesthetic appeal. McCullough's long career with the State Highway Department left a legacy of bridge building in Oregon unequaled in the twentieth century. In 1999, Engineering News-Record recognized McCullough as one of the most important bridge engineers of the past 125 years. He was an innovator in twentieth-century reinforced-concrete arch construction and built one of the first concrete tied-arch bridges in the United States. McCullough's bridges are rich in aesthetic detail; the finest among them are embellished with arch crowns, Art Deco-inspired pylons and obelisks, Gothic piers, towering spires, and arched railing panels. Illustrated with historic photographs and drawings, Robert Hadlow's definitive and highly readable biography will delight bridge buffs and engineering enthusiasts everywhere. It will also be of great interest to Oregon coast visitors and residents, and to students of transportation and technology history.

xi, 211 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman's Point of View is an intellectual biography of a long-forgotten radical female journalist in Portland, whose daily women's columns provide a window into the breadth of intellectual radicalism in Progressive Era journalism. Baldwin was one of an early generation of female journalists who were hired to lure female readers to the daily newspaper's department store advertisements. Instead of catering to the demands of consumerism, Baldwin quickly brought an anti-capitalist, antiracist agenda to her column, "The Woman's Point of View." She eschewed household hints and instead focused on the immorality of capitalists and imperialists while emphasizing the need for women to become independent and productive citizens. A century before the Occupy movement and the Women's March, Baldwin spoke truth to power. Imbued with a New Thought spirituality that presumed progressive thought could directly affect material reality, she wrote to move history forward. And yet, the trajectory of history proved as hard to forecast then as now. While her personal story seems to embody a modern progressivism, blending abolition with labor reform and anti-banker activism--positions from which she never wavered--her path grew more complicated as times changed in the aftermath of World War I, when she would advocate on behalf of both the Bolsheviks and the Ku Klux Klan. In this deeply researched and nuanced account of Eleanor Baldwin's intellectual journey, historian Larry Lipin reveals how even the most dedicated radical can be overcome by unforeseen events. Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman's Point of View restores a missing chapter in Portland's Progressive Era history and rescues this passionate, intriguing, and quixotic character from undeserved obscurity."-- Provided by publisher

xiv, 253 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

These are stories about an extraordinary array of women of different ethnicities and regions of Idaho, whose lives span six decades and more. With gusto and hard work they created their lives in their own ways and challenged the social mores of their times, intent on living meaningful and purposeful lives.

ix, 268 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm