Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

Branwen C. Patenaude’s Trails to Gold: Roadhouses of the Cariboo provides an exhaustive spatial and architectural study of the numbered mileposts, stagecoach stations, and agricultural roadhouses that anchored the Cariboo Wagon Road. Patenaude traces how early freighting routes and colonial supply networks were superimposed directly over ancient Indigenous footpaths and fishing trails used by the Secwépemc and St'át'imc peoples along the Fraser River canyon and interior plateau. The work systematically documents each vital waypoint along the historic route—including 93 Mile, 100 Mile House, 105 Mile House, 108 Mile Ranch, 111 Mile House, 114 Mile House, 122 Mile House, 127 Mile House, 141 Mile House, and 150 Mile House—chronicling how early roadhouse proprietors managed freight barns, stagecoach relays, and blacksmith shops to supply thousands of prospectors bound for the northern goldfields. Through archival photographs, route maps, and settler family records, the narrative illustrates how these roadside waypoints fostered permanent agrarian enclaves and livestock operations around Lac la Hache and Soda Creek.

2 volumes : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

80 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

“In Grays Harbor's historical record Trails & Trials of the Pioneers stands alone as an enduring trove of firsthand settler stories. ... the book came to fruition after years of conducting interviews, collecting written recollections, and compiling them into scrapbooks. ... Jann Castleberry’s revised fourth edition … is a fresh and expanded version of Cleland’s original. Historic photographs sourced from individuals, museums, and archives provide a valuable visual supplement to the original text. Castleberry also solicited new submissions from Quinault area residents whose stories compliment those captured so many years ago.”--Introduction

247 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 22 cm

"Breaking glass ceilings, organizing clubs and making history as the first in their fields, these trailblazing Black women paved the way for new generations. From Nettie Craig Asberry, founder of the Tacoma NAACP, to Dr. Dolores Silas, now honored by a school bearing her name, these women forged a path amid adversity. Black women were crucial to the war effort, working as Rosies at Boeing during World War II, and in the postwar years, Seattle musicians like Edyth Turnham and Her Knights of Syncopation were in high demand. These teachers, scientists and politicians served on boards, led protests and fought for civil rights across the state. Join author and historian Marilyn Morgan as she chronicles the incredible lives and contributions of Washington's Black women." -- Back cover

159 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"Trails are the most enduring memorials of human transportation and occupation. Long before stone monuments were created, pathways throughout the world were being worn in hardness by human feet. Travellers along the stretch of Highway 97 from Brewster, Washington, to Kamloops, BC, may not know that they are travelling a route as old as humankind's presence in the region. In fact, this north-south valley, a natural corridor linking the two major river systems that drain the Interior Plateu, has served as a transportation route for tens of thousand of years. Trail North traces the origins of this iconic trail among the Indigenous people of the Interior Plateau and its uses by three diffierent fur trading companies, before turning its focus on the period of 1858 to 1868, when the trail was used by miners, packers, and cattlemen as the major entry point into British Columbia from Washington Territory."--Back cover

299 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

The following collection of traditions is the result of the long-continued studies of Mr. James Teit on the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia. The tales have been recorded with great care. The present collection contains the prevalent versions, while variants are given in notes accompanying the tales. I have added to the notes a number of references to similar tales found among other tribes of North America. These references do not claim to be exhaustive, but an attempt has been made to bring forward the more important points of similarity between the traditions of the Thompson River Indians and those of other tribes. I have also added brief abstracts of the tales, in order to facilitate the use of the collection by the student of comparative mythology. -Franz Boas

viii pages, 1 leaf, 137 pages 25 cm.

"This uniquely west-coast take on Canada's origin story focuses on a long-forgotten event that nearly led to British Columbia becoming part of the United States. Long before a certain American president took to social media to express his desire to make Canada the fifty-first state, the west coast of what is today called British Columbia found itself in the crosshairs of two imperial powers, faced with the very real possibility of being ceded to the United States. In the summer of 1789, a political and trade dispute between the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, imperial Spain, Great Britain, and the USA converged in Nootka Sound, off Vancouver Island. If not for the intervention the King George's Sound Trading Company, Vancouver Island and British Columbia's fate could have turned out very differently, and the concept of a Canada that extended from Atlantic to Pacific would have been finished before it even began. With clear, engaging prose, author Graeme Menzies lays out the setting, intrigue, and dynamic cast of characters that ultimately determined Canada's geographical fate. Released at a time when imperialism, sovereignty, and national identity are more relevant than ever, this book asks us to ponder the events that shaped a nation and established a relationship between neighbouring countries that has once again become precarious."-- Provided by publisher

296 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

This books examines the Hudson's Bay company exploration efforts beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean from 1793 to 1843 – which led to the commercial development of the Pacific coast and the Cordilleran interior of western North America.

xxiv, 420 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

As the earliest "ethnographic" accounts of the Native peoples of northern North America, fur-trade records have long been mined for data by legal researchers, historians, and anthropologists. Traders' Tales provides the first sustained critical analysis of these fascinating historical documents. Drawing on the latest techniques in ethnohistory and cultural and literary theory, Elizabeth Vibert unpacks the assumptions behind traders' views - assumptions shaped by culture, gender, social class, and race. At the same time the author explores the responses of the Native Americans of the Plateau region to the pressures and changes wrought by this early colonial incursion into latter-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. The cultural perceptions of these white men in Indian country were open to inventive refashioning, and Native peoples played a central role in the encounter and in the way it was portrayed. Traders' Tales is both an analysis of fur-trader writings as a form of colonial discourse and a meticulous historical narrative providing significant new insights into early Native-white relations in a little-studied region of the West. A broadly comparative perspective and finely tuned critical skills enable Vibert to shed new light on the nature of colonial cultural relations, and to illuminate the ways in which racism and ethnocentrism are constructed historically

xviii, 366 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

James Henry Gilbert’s 1907 economic study, Trade and Currency in Early Oregon: A Study in the Commercial and Monetary History of the Pacific Northwest, analyzes the fiscal expedients and shifting media of exchange that governed the region during its transition from British corporate monopoly to American territorial statehood. Gilbert documents how early mercantile credit and Hudson's Bay Company bookkeeping systems were superimposed directly onto ancient Indigenous trade networks, where dentalium shells, dried salmon, and pelts had long functioned as stable commercial standards across Chinookan and Kalapuyan corridors along the Columbia and Willamette rivers. The narrative details the logistical adaptations of isolated Willamette Valley homesteaders, tracing how pioneer settlers utilized gristmill wheat receipts as circulating legal tender and later engineered the private minting of unrefined California gold dust into "Beaver Money" at Oregon City. Ultimately, the work demonstrates how these improvised monetary systems and river-landing trade flows broke the fur company's economic hegemony, laying the financial and institutional groundwork for formal American banking infrastructure across the Pacific slope.

126 pages diagram 25 cm

Published by local historian Harriet U. Fish, Tracks, Trails, and Tales in Clallam County, State of Washington chronicles the rugged pioneering history and frontier development of the Olympic Peninsula's northernmost reaches. The book captures the arduous experiences of early homesteaders, loggers, and native communities who navigated dense rain forests, uncharted coastal waters, and punishing mountain passes to build isolated settlements. Through first-person accounts, archival records, and local folklore, the text preserves the vanishing daily rhythms of a remote region shaped by timber extraction and maritime trade. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the geographic isolation of the Olympic Peninsula inverted standard settlement patterns; because dense wilderness and fierce coastal weather made overland travel nearly impossible, early Clallam County communities were often more closely tethered by steamship routes to distant Seattle and Victoria than to the rest of their own state.

214 pages : illustrations ; 22 x 28 cm

Tracking Down Oregon provides an expansive journey through the diverse and rugged microclimates that define the state, stretching from its storm-battered Pacific coastline to the vast, arid high deserts of the inland interior. Friedman meticulously maps forgotten pioneer settlements and isolated homesteads hidden within the dense timber of the Coast Range and the steep, volcanic canyons of the Cascade Mountains. By venturing into the remote, sun-baked expanses of Eastern Oregon and tracing the deep river gorges that carve through the inland plateau, the narrative illustrates how extreme physical barriers dictated the scattered placement of early communities. Ultimately, the book serves as a deeply localized spatial travelogue, demonstrating how the stark topographical divides of this Pacific Northwest landscape inherently shaped the enduring frontier character of its most secluded rural outposts.

Ralph Friedman catches the spirit of the pioneer, the entrepreneur the builders of Oregon. Interesting people and places are sprinkled throughout his narrative, and he gives directions on how to find them, even if only from an armchair.

xii, 306 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

From rich natural resources to free land to hard work and imaginative solutions. This is the story of one small county and what it took to make it strong. Stories of the hopeful, adventurous, opportunistic, and salt of the earth people that have made Jefferson County, Washington what it is today. By following footsteps from the past, starting with the tribes that inhabited this area for thousands of years, to Capt. George Vancouver's exploration in 1792, and on to the early European and east coast settlers, we are able to find the conditions under which decisions were made and actions taken. By unfolding the lives of the people that made it happen, it is possible to see more clearly how the richness of today's community was been handed down from those who came before us.

475 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Gordon R. Newell and Don Sherwood’s Town Where Time Stood Still chronicles the rapid rise and sudden industrial collapse of Seabeck, an isolated pioneer mill town carved directly out of the dense temperate rainforests bordering Washington's Hood Canal. The narrative maps how the impenetrable overland topography of the Kitsap Peninsula forced early timber barons to rely exclusively on this sheltered, deep-water aquatic highway to export massive lumber harvests to global maritime markets. By detailing the settlement’s complete economic dependence on its centralized waterfront sawmill, the text illustrates how a singular reliance on highly localized resource extraction and vulnerable marine infrastructure dictated both its booming pioneer prosperity and its ultimate vulnerability. Ultimately, the account demonstrates how the inescapable geographic isolation that initially birthed this thriving lumber empire eventually ensured its demise following a catastrophic mill fire, freezing the bypassed coastal enclave in time as overland rail networks fundamentally reshaped the broader Pacific seaboard.

32 unnumbered pages : illustrations ; 14 x 21 cm

"How do we plan for a better Oregon in 2050? What will the state be like in that year for five million Oregonians, particularly for the least privileged and powerful residents? These are the questions that drive Oregon 2050, an interdisciplinary project at Portland State University that aims to help the state become more environmentally sustainable, socially equitable, and fiscally resilient. In this compelling volume, leading experts in land use and urban planning, in cooperation with other scholars and community partners, envision various possible futures and begin the work of developing statewide plans to guide Oregon through the decades ahead. Building on the state's policy innovation and planning legacy, contributors to Toward Oregon 2050 address current challenges such as housing scarcity, income inequality, the rural-urban divide, and climate change. They offer recommendations on a range of issues, from culture to incarceration, transportation to voting rights, all with the goal of imagining what a fair and equitable Oregon might look like. Some of the imagined futures-with worsening effects of climate change, environmental harms, and social inequities-are not bright for many Oregonians. Other futures include enhanced resiliency to forest fires and flooding, more Oregonians in high-paying jobs and in secure housing, and more children walking and biking to school. But those positive futures are not guaranteed, and getting there won't be easy. They'll require all stakeholders-state and local government, members of all political parties, private businesses, non-profit organizations, and individual residents-to play a role in ensuring a better future for the next generation of Oregonians. Intended for all Oregonians who care about their state's future, Toward Oregon 2050 will also appeal to scholars and planners who have long looked to Oregon for inspiration and lessons learned. The book invites readers to envision the future of Oregon and to contribute their part toward a better future for the state"-- Provided by publisher

ix, 452 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Every state in the nation has geographic divisions—upstate/downstate, urban/rural, major city/rest of the state—that loom large as barriers to common cause. Toward One Oregon examines the prospects for uniting one geographically diverse state in the years ahead. When Oregon became a state in 1859, its role in the nation and the global economy was quite different than it is today. Boundaries that made sense in the nineteenth century don’t always serve twenty-first century needs productively. Current times demand a new, strategic understanding of the state and its role in the nation and the world if its people—all of its people—are to thrive. Oregon, like many states, is faced with recovering and rediscovering a sense of shared purpose as it attempts to meet the needs of its diverse communities, peoples, and landscapes. Toward One Oregon explores Oregon’s urban and rural history and assesses the current situation through political, economic, and demographic lenses. The book’s contributors include historians, urban planners, journalists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. They explore the links and splits between urban and rural Oregon and together offer a collaborative path forward—for Oregon and for any state faced with similar, seemingly insurmountable, geographic divisions—using the best of urban and rural policies in strategic and complementary ways.

183 pages : illustrations, charts, maps ; 23 cm

This book grew out of a manuscript left by Andrew Garcia. Bennett Stein edited the manuscript to tell Garcia's story of the 1877 Nez Perce War, the end of the buffalo herds, and other historic events in western life. Garcia, a man of Hispanic descent was born in El Paso, moved north to Montana in 1876 and became a mountain man. Garcia served as a herder and packer for the U.S. Army in Montana in the Yellowstone and Musselshell country, working for Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis' "Boys in Blue" out of Fort Ellis from 1876-1878. He was present during the Nez Perce War. The book begins in 1878, when Garcia left his job with the army to go into business with a man named Beaver Tom, trapping beaver and trading for buffalo robes. While trading with members of the Pend d'Oreilles tribe, Garcia met and married a Nez Perce woman known among the Pend d'Oreille as In-who-lise ('Broken Tooth'; her original name, Kot-kot-hy-hih, means White Feather), who had been with Chief Joseph's tribe when they ran from the U.S. Cavalry. The book includes Garcia's reproduction of her firsthand account of the final engagement with 7th Infantry at the Battle of the Big Hole

xviii, 409 pages : maps ; 18 cm

Presents an illustrated history of the totem poles of the Native peoples of the Northwest Coast and examines their form and meaning, origin and cultural significance to those in the Pacific Northwest

58 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Lula Barnard, Faunda Bybee, and Lola Walker’s Tosoiba, compiled for the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, chronicles the grueling agrarian colonization of southeastern Idaho’s Gem Valley, an isolated, high-altitude basin defined by its rugged volcanic topography and punishing alpine climate. The collected narratives map how the severe environmental realities of this arid inland steppe forced early Mormon pioneers to rely on immediate, cooperative hydrological engineering, systematically diverting mountain runoff to establish vital crop irrigation networks. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that artificially mastering this localized hydrology and constructing robust communal infrastructure to endure the brutal winter extremes were the absolute prerequisites for transforming a forbidding high-desert expanse into a permanent, agriculturally self-sufficient frontier settlement.

x, 326 pages : illustrations, portraits, map ; 23 cm

In Too High and Too Steep, David B. Williams uses his deep knowledge of Seattle, scientific background, and extensive research and interviews to illuminate the physical challenges and sometimes startling hubris of these large-scale transformations, from the filling in of the Duwamish tideflats to the massive regrading project that pared down Denny Hill. Residents and visitors in today’s Seattle would barely recognize the landscape that its founding settlers first encountered. As the city grew, its leaders and inhabitants dramatically altered its topography to accommodate their changing visions. In Too High and Too Steep, David B. Williams uses his deep knowledge of Seattle, scientific background, and extensive research and interviews to illuminate the physical challenges and sometimes startling hubris of these large-scale transformations, from the filling in of the Duwamish tideflats to the massive regrading project that pared down Denny Hill. In the course of telling this fascinating story, Williams helps readers find visible traces of the city’s former landscape and better understand Seattle as a place that has been radically reshaped.

xxii, 239 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Bev Christensen’s Too Good to Be True: The Story of the Gang Ranch provides an extensive corporate and social history of the iconic Gang Ranch, one of the largest and most legendary cattle operations in North America. Christensen details how the ranch was founded in the 1860s by the Harper brothers along the dramatic river breaks where the Chilcotin and Fraser rivers converge, expanding across hundreds of thousands of acres of deeded and leased rangeland traditionally stewarded by the Secwépemc and Tsilhqot'in. The work chronicles the management regimes, international financial ownerships, and grueling cowboy logistics required to run massive cattle herds across the rugged benchlands of Dog Creek, Empire Valley, Alkali Lake, and Big Creek. Christensen captures both the romanticized lore and the complex financial cycles that shaped this massive pastoral empire across more than a century of interior ranching.

240 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

"A personal memoir about growing up in a small town during the time period of 1945-1965. This was a pivotal time in our recent history, and the pieces I have written reflect the growing up and loss of innocence of not only me, but the town of Bend, Oregon"--Publisher description

101 pages : black and white illustrations ; 22 cm

The Washington Pioneer Project’s Told by the pioneers: tales of frontier life (Vol. II) explores the deeply personal endurance and collaborative community building that defined everyday life during Washington’s territorial era and early statehood. The narrative illustrates how the diverse and challenging environmental realities of the Pacific Northwest—from the dense, rain-soaked timberlands of the western coastal basins to the expansive, arid plains of the eastern plateaus—required immense resilience and profound daily adaptation from ordinary homesteaders. By meticulously preserving a rich tapestry of firsthand oral histories, pioneer diaries, and localized memories, the text highlights the steady transition from isolated, vulnerable land claims to cohesive, mutually supportive settlements. It emphasizes the shared labor of communal harvests, the cooperative establishment of early frontier schools, and the thoughtful, everyday cross-cultural interactions necessary for survival. Ultimately, the collection demonstrates that patiently relying on neighborly cooperation and collaboratively adapting to the formidable geographical divides of the frontier were the essential, human-scale steps in cultivating the enduring civic foundation of Washington state.

222 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 26 cm

"Tofino and Clayoquot Sound delves into all facets of the region's history, bringing to life the chronicle that started with the dramatic upheavals of geological formation and continues to the present day. The book tours through the history of the Hesquiaht, Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht as well as other nations that inhabited the area in earlier times. It documents the arrival of Spanish, British and American traders on the coast and their avid greed for sea otter pelts. It follows the development of the huge fur seal industry and its profound impact on the coast. It tracks the establishment of reserve lands and two residential schools. The coming of World War II is discussed, as is the installation of a large Air Force base near Tofino, which changed the town and area dramatically. From here the story spirals into the post-road period. With gravel and asphalt came tourism, newcomers, the counter-culture of the 1960s, the establishment of Pacific Rim National Park and, of course, surfing. The book also addresses logging—which became the main industry in the area—and its questionable practices, going into detail about the "War in the Woods"—the world-famous conflict and largest mass arrest in Canadian history." -- Amazon.com viewed August 3, 2020

xvi, 622 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm.

"Since 1879, Indian children from all regions of the United States have entered federal boarding schools - institutions designed to assimilate them into mainstream society. Chemawa Indian School in western Oregon, one of the nation's oldest and the longest still in continuous operation, is an emblem of a system that has intimately impacted countless lives and communities. In To Win the Indian Heart: Music at Chemawa Indian School, Melissa Parkhurst records the history of the school's musical life. She explores the crucial role music was meant to play in the total transformation of Indian children, and the cultural recovery and resiliency it often inspired instead. Parkhurst chronicles the complex ways in which students, families, faculty, and administrators employed music, both as a tool for assimilation and, conversely, as a vehicle for student resistance - a subject long overlooked in literature on Indian education and the assimilation campaign. Combining oral histories of Chemawa alumni with archival records of campus life, the book examines the prominent forms of music making at Chemawa - school band, choirs, private lessons, pageants, dance, garage bands, and powwows. Parkhurst traces the trajectory of federal Indian policy, highlighting students' creative responses and the ways in which music reveals the inherent contradictions in the U.S. government's assimilation practices."--Back cover

236 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.