Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

The Dictionary of Oregon History is a comprehensive reference book written by Howard McKinley Corning. The book provides a detailed account of the history of the state of Oregon, covering a wide range of topics such as geography, politics, culture, and economy. It contains over 1,500 entries that are arranged alphabetically, making it easy for readers to find the information they need.The entries in the Dictionary of Oregon History are concise and informative, providing readers with a wealth of knowledge about the state's past. The book covers everything from the earliest Native American settlements in the region to the present day, including important events such as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Oregon Trail, and the state's admission to the Union in 1859.In addition to historical events, the Dictionary of Oregon History also covers important figures who have shaped the state's history, including politicians, artists, writers, and activists. The book also includes entries on important landmarks, such as Mount Hood and Crater Lake, as well as important industries such as logging, fishing, and agriculture.Overall, the Dictionary of Oregon History is an essential reference book for anyone interested in the history of the state.

281 pages ; 26 cm

"My grandfather brought his wife and nine children to Cortez Island in 1917 with the dream of founding his own orchard, flower garden, and nursery." And so started a family legacy that would draw the author back to BC's coastal islands for the rest of her life. In 1930, June's parents bought the Loumar, a 36-foot wooden boat destined to become the family summer home for two decades. Now in her memoir of photographs, June relives the magic of those summer days on the Loumar. She provides historical background and highlights points of interest for travellers visiting the island today.

224 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

Beautiful Desolation Sound, 150 km north of Vancouver, has for many years been the most popular cruising destination on the BC coast, but is today almost as devoid of local occupants as it was in 1792 when the dyspeptic Captain George Vancouver gave it its misleading name. It has not always been this way. Thick clamshell middens in remote bays, rotted pilings on silent estuaries, ambitious stone terraces on vacant hillsides, overgrown fences around deserted fields, even abandoned railroads--all contribute to an impression that this is an area full of ghosts, an area with a storied past. In Desolation Sound, author Heather Harbord details that remarkable past and brings those ghosts back to unforgettable life. We meet Mike Shuttler, the Homer-quoting hermit who figured in famous books by Stuart Edward White and M. Wylie Blanchet. We meet his illiterate neighbour Phil Lavigne, who said, when Shuttler died, "All dem words, and 'e 'ad to die like all de rest of us!" We meet "the Cougar Queen of Okeover Arm," who said, "Living in the bush like I do, a gun is as much a part of my household tools as a vacuum cleaner is in the city." We visit Baloney Bay, a sprawling Depression-era logging camp where human life had so little value they piled accident victims in a heap and didn't bother moving them until the end of the working day. We meet Sliammon chief Joe Mitchell, whose ancestors had an aboriginal city with buildings 200 feet long in now-deserted Grace Harbour. Harbord assiduously tracks down all the old legends that cling to the shoreside trees like Spanish moss, debunking some, confirming many. Desolation Sound is a captivating book full of great characters, heroic deeds, humorous anecdotes and well-researched fact. It fills a crucial hole in the history of the BC coast.

xi, 260 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.

Idaho is rich in natural treasure with more than 100 named mountain ranges, surging rivers, deep canyons, abundant wildlife, seagoing fish, vast forests and picturesque lakes. Throughout the 20th Century many in Idaho saw the state's natural heritage threatened. Early in the 20th Century the state's club women campaigned for a Sawtooth National Park. In the 1930s, a hunting enthusiast named Harry Shellworth led a movement to establish a primitive area in central Idaho. A forester named Bob Marshall persuaded the Forest Service to designate an even larger primitive area north of the Salmon River. Despite these efforts Idaho suffered huge losses of fish and wildlife habitat. Beginning in 1954, sportsmen fought back by sponsoring an initiative to curb dredge mining damage and opposing dams on the Clearwater River and on the Snake River below the mouth of the Salmon. Still to come were intense struggles to stop a proposed open pit mine in the White Clouds, retain a free flowing Snake River in Hells Canyon and protect the Salmon River Wilderness. All of these battles were fought with the intent of preserving the land and the history that make up Idaho's natural heritage. The stories of the various conservation efforts are collected in this book

351 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"How British Columbia became an international hotspot for submarines, submersibles, Newtsuits, underwater robotics, Arctic sonar and a host of other cutting-edge undersea technologies. In Deep, Dark & Dangerous, maritime historian Vickie Jensen explores the fascinating story of British Columbia's rise to become a world leader in the underwater tech industry. She profiles both trailblazing innovators and newcomers to the field, and traces BC's colourful history and bright future as a front runner in the world of subsea technology innovation. This little-known saga began in the early 1960s. Two commercial hard-hat divers from the Vancouver area, Don Sorte and Al Trice, realized that they needed a small manned submersible with robot arms for deep-sea work. They couldn't find one to buy, so they decided to partner with machinist Mack Thomson and build their own. Experts told them it would be suicidal to try a home-made version, but just over two years and $100,000 later, their Pisces I was successfully making two-thousand-foot dives. They formed International Hydrodynamics, which went on to build fourteen submersibles and produce a generation of experts that would launch an entire industry of subsea companies in BC. During the same period, Phil Nuytten went from opening Vancouver's first scuba shop as a teenager to becoming a commercial diver and starting his undersea construction company at age twenty-five. Now, Nuytten is best known for his atmospheric diving suits, Newtsuit and Exosuit, along with a series of submersibles for scientific research. Drawing on her background in documenting both history and industry, Jensen uncovers the stories of over forty subsea pioneers, both historical and current, and details the innovations that are responsible for BC's remarkable and continuing subsea reputation. Written with colour and flair, this is a fascinating and exciting story that anyone can enjoy."-- Provided by publisher

282 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Deep River chronicles the industrial and pioneer history of a remote logging community nestled within the dense, rain-soaked coastal forests of southwestern Washington's Wahkiakum County. The narrative details how the area's profound geographic isolation—wedged between the sprawling lower Columbia River estuary and steep, heavily timbered hills—forced early settlers to rely entirely on a network of tidal waterways to transport massive old-growth logs and essential supplies. By tracing the Appelo family's mercantile and civic efforts, the book illustrates the immense physical labor required to sustain a permanent settlement amidst a soggy, stump-littered wilderness where rugged riverboats served as the only reliable connection to the outside world. Ultimately, this localized biography provides a vivid spatial history of how the formidable maritime climate and impenetrable riverine topography of the Pacific Northwest coast inherently defined the grueling rhythm of early logging camps.

107 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

"This book brings to light the fascinating story of a community and place: Tod Inlet, near Victoria, BC. From the original inhabitants from the Tsartlip First Nation to the lost community of immigrant workers from China and India, from a company town to the development of parkland, the wealth of history in this rich area reflects much of the history of the entire province. The story of Tod Inlet and its communities spans from Vancouver Island to the BC coast north to Ocean Falls, south to California, and east to Golden, BC. David Gray draws from interviews with elders of the Tsartlip First Nation, descendants of the Chinese and Sikh workers, and the local community, and from archives held in Victoria and Ottawa. This detailed, illustrated book by an award-winning filmmaker tells the whole story of the natural area, the archaeological sites, the community of Tod Inlet, the Vancouver Portland Cement Company and cement plant (an industrial first), and the development of the Butchart Gardens."-- Provided by publisher

xii, 248 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 23 cm

Published in 2022 by Vera Isabel Creighton, DeeDee's Indigenous dream families between St. Elmo and Lytton explores the deeply intertwined familial, cultural, and geographic histories of Indigenous communities inhabiting the rugged corridor between St. Elmo and Lytton in British Columbia. Drawing on regional archives, personal narratives, and local genealogies, the book documents the enduring social networks and resilience of families navigating the disruptions of colonial encroachment along the Fraser Canyon. A keen insight drawn from the text is how it shifts the focus away from macroeconomic frontier histories to center kinship and oral tradition, revealing how indigenous family structures served as the primary vehicle for cultural survival and continuity through decades of systemic displacement

122 pages

In December of 1905, ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho was killed when a dynamite bomb shattered his home in Caldwell, Idaho. The dynamiter s confession implicated four officials of the powerful Western Federation of Miners, a militant union that had figured prominently in the labor wars of the day. The trial of the union men became a subject of national interest. A trial in a small town in Idaho with national implications regarding unions, Socialism and labor riots.

viii, 310 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Published as a collection of his correspondence, Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet’s Letters and Sketches documents his arduous 1841-1842 journey to establish St. Mary's Mission among the Flathead (Salish) Indians in the Bitterroot Valley of present-day Montana. The text provides vivid, firsthand ethnographic observations of the Rocky Mountain tribes, detailing their daily customs, buffalo hunts, and initial enthusiastic reception of Catholicism. A keen insight drawn from the letters is the profound paradox of De Smet’s mission: while he deeply admired the Indigenous peoples and frequently romanticized them as uncorrupted paragons of natural virtue, his ultimate objective was to systematically replace their traditional spiritual practices with rigid European Catholic orthodoxy. Furthermore, these widely circulated letters inadvertently acted as powerful promotional literature for westward migration, accelerating the white American expansion that would ultimately dismantle the isolated indigenous Catholic utopias De Smet had hoped to build.

pages [123]-411 : 13 plates ; 25 cm.

This book deals with the vicissitudes and feats of Juan Joseph Pérez Hernández, a Spanish Royal Navy seaman in charge of the maritime exploration of the northern part of the New World in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The author explains that the ultimate reason for these travels was to be found in the policy and aspirations of two European empires, the Spanish and the Russian. The Spaniards wanted to consolidate and expand their territories in these northern latitudes in the face of the threat of the penetration through trade and settlement by the nascent Russian empire. | Esta obra narra los avatares y hazañas de Juan Joseph Pérez Hernández, navegante al servicio de la Real Armada española y encargado de la exploración marítima y descubrimiento de las tierras septentrionales del Nuevo Mundo durante el último cuarto del siglo XVIII. El motivo ulterior de dichas travesías, explica la autora, se hallaba en la política y las aspiraciones de dos imperios europeos, el español y el ruso; el primero debía afirmar y expandir sus territorios en aquellas latitudes septentrionales, ante la amenaza de una incursión comercial y poblacional del naciente imperio ruso.

294 pages ; 23 cm

Marcia Willoughby Tucker’s Day Island: A Glimpse of the Past provides a granular local and spatial chronicle of Day Island, a small tidal landform situated along the turbulent waters of the Tacoma Narrows in southern Puget Sound. The volume documents how late-nineteenth-century homesteads, summer cottages, and small-craft boatyards were systematically superimposed onto the estuarine shoreline, seasonal shellfish beds, and fishing corridors traditionally stewarded by the Puyallup and Southern Coast Salish peoples. Tucker details the evolution of the island’s maritime logistics, illustrating how early residents navigated the treacherous tidal currents of the Narrows, established mosquito fleet launch connections to Tacoma, and eventually engineered permanent bridge transit to the Pierce County mainland. Ultimately, the narrative captures the transition of an exposed tidal waypoint into a specialized maritime and residential enclave, illustrating how early twentieth-century coastal communities remained fundamentally shaped by the natural marine hydrology of the Salish Sea.

xiii, 98 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Describes 125 hiking trails in the Central Cascades in Washington state, including detailed route descriptions, information on camping options, flora, fauna, historical trails, photographs, and maps. With some of the largest tracts of wilderness to be found in the Pacific Northwest, the Central Cascades are packed with wildlife, geological diversity, and opportunity for adventure. Using US Highway 2 as its primary organizing principle, this second edition of Day Hiking Central Cascades focuses on the best day hikes to be found between the Sultan Basin and Wenatchee, and around Blewett Pass, Chelan, and the Stehekin and Entiat River Valleys.

355 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 18 cm

M. E. Coutts’s Dawson Creek, Past and Present chronicles the dramatic evolution of a remote agrarian outpost situated on the grueling ecological frontier where the fertile Peace River prairies collide with the unforgiving boreal wilderness of northern British Columbia. The narrative maps how profound continental isolation and punishing subarctic winters initially restricted early pioneers to localized survival, completely severed from southern markets by vast expanses of impenetrable muskeg and rugged alpine barriers. By detailing the explosive military engineering of the Alaska Highway, the text illustrates how the urgent geopolitical necessity to bridge these massive northern distances drove the rapid construction of an unprecedented overland transit corridor. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that deploying mechanized infrastructure to conquer this harsh, landlocked geography was the absolute prerequisite for transforming an isolated prairie settlement into the vital, industrialized gateway to the subarctic frontier.

115 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

Davis Country collects the best writings of H. L. Davis, one of the Northwest's premier authors and the only Oregonian to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Born in southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley in 1894, Davis grew up in Antelope and The Dalles. He began as a poet, receiving the prestigious Levinson Prize at age twenty-five. With the encouragement of H. L. Mencken, he turned to fiction, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his 1935 novel Honey in the Horn, which Mencken called the best first novel ever published in America. Full of humor and humanity, Davis's work displays a vast knowledge of Pacific Northwest history, lore, and landscape. His instinctive feel for the Northwest – the weather, trees, plants, animals, the varieties of Oregon rain, the smell of forest winds and high-desert heat – is unmatched. This volume gathers many of Davis's finest stories, essays, poems, and letters, as well as excerpts from his most famous novels. An introduction by editors Brian Booth and Glen Love, a brief autobiography, and an afterword on Davis's final, unfinished novel provide for a better understanding of this truly original Northwest voice.

320 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

"During a meteoric career that spanned from 1825 to 1834, David Douglas made the first systematic collections of flora and fauna over many parts of the greater Pacific Northwest. Despite his early death, colleagues in Great Britain attached the Douglas name to more than 80 different species, including the iconic timber tree of the region. David Douglas, a Naturalist at Work is a colorfully illustrated collection of essays that examines various aspects of Douglas's career, demonstrating the connections between his work in the Pacific Northwest of the 19th century and the place we know today"--Amazon

xv, 191 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 23 cm

The cast of characters in Elizabeth Poehlman’s book, Darrington: Mining Town/Timber Town reads like a Wild West novel set in Paul Bunyan country. But this is no novel – Poehlman has written a memorable small-town history. The book starts in the late 1800s with the struggles of Chief Wawetkin and the Sauk-Suiattle Indians to deal with the onset of miners and settlers throughout their homelands deep in what would soon be renamed the North Cascades mountains in the new state of Washington. Subsequent chapters feature gold-fevered miners (and a revenge murder); a hotel owner who asked to be deputized for a half hour to deal with a knife-wielding drunk the sheriff couldn’t handle; the town doctor who kept a bear cub as a pet; the “sky pilot” minister who was too scared to preach in the rough railroad logging camps, opting to show slides instead; the Tarheels who followed the timber industry from North Carolina and brought their love of bluegrass and moonshine; the Depression-era housewife who distrusted banks and stashed her family’s savings around her waist in a hidden money belt – enough to almost pay off their land and house. Darrington, as Poehlman learned while living there, may be backwoods, but never boring.

176 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

In April 1956, Portland Oregonian investigative reporters Wallace Turner and William Lambert exposed organized crime rackets and rampant corruption within Portland’s law enforcement institutions. The biggest scandal involved Teamsters officials and the city’s lucrative prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging operations. Turner and Lambert blew the cover on the Teamsters’ scheme to take over alcohol sales and distribution and profit from these fringe enterprises. The Rose City was seething with vice and intrigue. The exposé and other reports of racketeering from around the country incited a national investigation into crime networks and union officials headed by the McClellan Committee, or officially, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field. The commission discovered evidence in Portland that helped prove Teamsters president Dave Beck’s embezzlement of union funds and union vice president Jimmy Hoffa’s connection to the mob. Dark Rose reveals the fascinating and sordid details of an important period in the history of what by the end of the century had become a great American city. It is a story of Portland’s repeated and often failed efforts to flush out organized crime and municipal corruption - a familiar story for many mid-twentieth-century American cities that were attempting to clean up their police departments and municipal governments. Dark Rose also helps explain the heritage of Portland’s reform politics and the creation of what is today one of the country’s most progressive cities.

xiii, 202 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

"Dangerous Subjects describes the life and times of James D. Saules, a black sailor who was shipwrecked off the coast of Oregon and settled there in 1841. Before landing in Oregon, Saules traveled the world as a whaleman in the South Pacific and later as a crew member of the United States Exploring Expedition. Saules resided in the Pacific Northwest for just two years before a major wave of Anglo-American immigrants arrived in covered wagons. In Oregon, Saules encountered a multiethnic population already transformed by colonialism--in particular, the fur industry and Protestant missionaries. Once the Oregon Trail emigrants began arriving in large numbers, in 1843, Saules had to adapt to a new reality in which Anglo-American settlers persistently sought to marginalize and exclude black residents from the region. Unlike Saules, who adapted and thrived in Oregon's multiethnic milieu, the settler colonists sought to remake Oregon as a white man's country. They used race as shorthand to determine which previous inhabitants would be included and which would be excluded. Saules inspired and later had to contend with a web of black exclusion laws designed to deny black people citizenship, mobility, and land. In Dangerous Subjects, Kenneth Coleman sheds light on a neglected chapter in Oregon's history. His book will be welcomed by scholars in the fields of western history and ethnic studies, as well as general readers interested in early Oregon and its history of racial exclusion."-- Provided by publisher

x, 202 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Cáw Pawá Láakni / They Are Not Forgotten is a book like none other. This ethnogeographic atlas of Native place names presents a compelling account of interactions between a homeland and its people. A project of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation - composed of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Tribes in eastern Oregon - Cáw Pawá Láakni documents and describes more than four hundred place names. The full-color, detailed maps and the narrative that introduces and supports them paint a picture of a way of life. This meticulous assemblage of memory and meaning echoes cultural and geographical information that has all but disappeared from common knowledge. To create this historical and cultural atlas of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla homeland, which spans the Columbia River and its tributaries from southeastern Washington to northeastern Oregon, ethnographic, traditional, and institutional knowledge was gathered together and incorporated into a GIS database to produce customized maps that present this knowledge. Many of the accounts are from the individuals who traveled on horseback, lived in and saw these places, and possessed knowledge that can no longer be replicated. In presenting these place-names, the Tribes strive to ensure the vitality of this communal knowledge into the future. In Cáw Pawá Láakni, places named in Indian languages are juxtaposed with sites that are central to the colonial period in the West, such as those described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and those given to fur-trading posts, missions, and places on the Oregon Trail. The atlas adds a needed and vivid Native perspective to the written history and geography of Oregon and the West.

xxi, 248 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 30 cm

For over a century, water has connected the communities on Puget Sound, starting with days of the iron-hulled steamers of the Black Ball Line and continuing to the vessels of Washington State Ferries. Puget Sound continues to be a vital link between cities, well into the era of smart phones and self-driving cars. From the recycled ferries of San Francisco Bay to the elegant pocket liners of the Canadian Pacific Railway, transporting people from one isolated community to another has grown to carrying 25 million commuters and tourists every year. Modern ferry travel on Puget Sound begins with the converted passenger steamers at the early part of the twentieth century. Built in the days before cars became the main mode of travel, these small steamers morphed into the blueprint of today's largest double-ended ferries in the United States. Ferry travel today is as scenic as in the days of Model Ts and steamships. Puget Sound remains a nautical highway as much now as it was in the era of high button shoes and derby hats.

143 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), facsimiles ; 24 cm

Oral Bullard's 1968 book, Crisis on the Columbia, examines the profound ecological and cultural transformations inflicted upon the Columbia River basin by rapid hydroelectric dam construction. The narrative heavily focuses on the river's path forming the border of Oregon and Washington, where structures like the Bonneville Dam near Portland inundated historical Aboriginal fishing sites. Further upstream into eastern Washington, Bullard maps the devastating environmental consequences of the massive Grand Coulee Dam, which flooded ancestral homelands, destroyed the vital Kettle Falls fishery, and permanently blocked salmon migration to the upper river. By detailing these massive engineering projects along the Columbia's course, the book captures the geographical and biological crisis that reshaped this central aquatic artery of the Pacific Northwest.

151, [5] pages illustrations, facsimiles, maps, portraits 24 cm

A lively and perceptive new look at twentieth-century Pacific Northwest writing, The Arbutus/Madrone Files explores the dynamics of this cross-border region using resonant quotations, poetry, song lyrics, and art to demonstrate and enhance author Laurie Ricou's critical readings and ideas. The Arbutus/Madrone Files is a wide-ranging, deeply felt meditation on the land, people, and literature of the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest, gathered into twelve thematic essays or "files," including the Island File, Salmon File, Woodswords File, Sasquatch File, and, of course, the Rain File. A longtime student of literary regions, Ricou moves in this book from a scholarly perspective toward more personal and lyrical reflections about what constitutes "home" and "region." He explores the work of such Northwest authors as Emily Carr, H.L. Davis, David Guterson, Jack Hodgins, John Keeble, Ken Kesey, Joy Kogawa, Ursula Le Guin, John Okada, Kim Stafford, and David Wagoner, among others. This unique, stylishly written book will appeal to Pacific Northwest book-lovers interested in exploring the region's rich homegrown literature and art, and will be of great interest to scholars and students of regional literature, eco-criticism, and Pacific Northwest culture.

280 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 23 cm

"Craigdarroch Castle, built by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir for his wife, Joan, and their family, was completed in 1890. Following Joan's death, the castle was put up for sale in 1908, and later housed a military hospital and the nascent University of Victoria. Since 1979 the castle has operated as a museum and is one of the top tourist attractions in the city, a prime example of a 'bonanza castle' and a rich repository of Victorian-era furnishings and décor, as well as objects evoking the hospital and college eras. Author Moira Dann offers the reader 21 selections from the castle's collection, using each artifact as a portal into the history of the building and life in Victorian and more recent times. The Black Forest clock, acquired by Joan on a trip to Europe; the telescope used by the eldest Dunsmuir son, James, aboard his yacht the Dolaura; the castle's famous stained-glass windows; a nineteenth-century intercom system known as a speaking tube--these and 17 more are described with detail and enthusiasm, and accompanied by photographs. Dann provides careful research into each object's provenance and manufacture, while inviting readers to join her imaginative journeys into the lives of the castle's occupants through the years."-- Provided by publisher

142 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

The vivid imagination, robust humor, and profound sense of place of the Indians of Oregon are revealed in this anthology, which gathers together hitherto scattered and often inaccessible legends originally transcribed and translated by scholars such as Archie Phinney, Melville Jacobs, and Franz Boas.

xxxvii, 295 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm