Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

Being in Being contains three masterpieces by legendary Haida mythteller Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay. The shortest recounts the high points of the legend of his family. The second, Raven Travelling, is the longest and most complex version of the story of the Raven ever recorded on the Northwest Coast. The third is The Qquuna Cycle, a narrative poem of nearly 5,500 lines, one of the true masterpieces of North American literature.

1 online resource

Without a recognized reservation or homeland, what keeps an Indian tribe together? How can members of the tribe understand their heritage and pass it on to younger generations? For Christine Dupres, a member of the Cowlitz tribe of southwestern Washington State, these questions were personal as well as academic. In Being Cowlitz: How One Tribe Renewed and Sustained Its Identity, what began as the author's search for her own history opened a window into the practices and narratives that sustained her tribe's identity even as its people were scattered over several states. Dupres argues that the best way to understand a tribe is through its stories. From myths and spiritual traditions defining the people's relationship to the land to the more recent history of cultural survival and engagement with the U.S. government, Dupres shows how stories are central to the ongoing process of forming a Cowlitz identity. Through interviews and profiles of political leaders, Dupres reveals the narrative and rhetorical strategies that protect and preserve the memory and culture of the tribe. In the process, she creates a blueprint for cultural preservation that current and future Cowlitz tribal leaders--as well as other indigenous activists--can use to keep tribal memories alive

1 online resource (169 pages)

In the late 1960s, Malcolm Terence left his job as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times to look for adventure and may have found more than he bargained for. The era had triggered unprecedented social and political changes in America, tectonic shifts that challenged war and the social order that oppressed people along lines of class, gender, and race. One branch was a back-to-the-land movement, and Terence, who had just traveled for a year managing a rock band, strayed into Black Bear Ranch, a commune just starting in a remote corner of the Klamath Mountains near the California-Oregon border. Black Bear Ranch still exists, but many of its early residents eventually returned to urban civilization. A few, Terence among them, stayed on in neighboring river towns. Some tried logging, others gold mining, and some tried growing marijuana, all with mixed success. The local mining and timber communities had a checkered opinion of their new hippie neighbors, as did the Native tribes, but it was the kind of place where people helped each other out, even if they didn’t always agree. When wildfires grew large, Terence and other veterans of the commune joined the fire crews run by the US Forest Service. In between, the Black Bear expats built homesteads, planted gardens, delivered babies, and raised their children. They gradually overcame the skepticism of the locals and joined them in political battles against the use of herbicides in the forest and the Forest Service’s campaign to close all the mining claims. As in the best of organizing efforts, the organizers learned as much as they led. Beginner’s Luck will appeal to anyone who experienced life on a commune in the 1960s–1970s or who wants to learn about this chapter in modern American history. Terence offers insight into environmental activism and the long history of conflict between resource exploitation and Native American rights without lecturing or pontification. With wit, humor, and humility, his anecdotal essays chronicle a time and place where disparate people came together to form an unlikely community.

236 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

According to scholars, the Shoshone, Bannock, and Nez Percés Indians of Idaho obtained horses roughly three centuries ago. That makes them the "first stockmen of Idaho," although we know little of that history. Still, when the Lewis & Clark expedition visited the future state in 1805 and 1806, they met bands of skill horseback hunters and warriors, who owned vast herds of fine horses. Before the Spud details the history of Idaho stock raising during the century that followed that meeting

iii, 245 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Seattle is a music town with rich, deep roots that have influenced the culture and identity of its civic life for decades. In a society that appreciates music but is ambivalent toward the profession of making it, the importance and contribution of Seattle's musicians have been routinely overlooked in historical accounts of the city. Kurt Armbruster fills that gap in this far-reaching and entertaining panorama of Seattle music from the 1890s to the 1960s, "before Seattle rocked." For this once-remote city, music forged links as real as those created by railroads and steamships. Classical music embodied the middle-class aspirations for gentility and cosmopolitan stature; jazz and blues gave Seattle's small African American community a vehicle for affirmation and economic advancement; ethnic music helped immigrants adjust to a new home; songs and drumming kept the memories of the Duwamish alive in a changing world. Before Seattle Rocked is enlivened by personal anecdotes and memories from many of Seattle's most beloved musicians and is enriched by historic photos of the changing music scene.

ix, 374 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Becoming Walla Walla covers Walla Walla Valley history from the time of the Sahaptian Peoples’ first encounters with Euro-Americans to the initial expiration of the U.S. government’s treaty with the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla. It sheds light on the city’s and reservation’s simultaneous development, re-animates the Walla Walla of the 1860s and 70s, reconsiders its status in early Washington Territory and Oregon State histories, and documents transformations of the region’s built and natural environments.

320 pages : illustrations

"A brisk chronicle of Vancouver, BC, from early days to its emergence as a global metropolis, refracted through the events, characters and communities that have shaped the city. In Becoming Vancouver award-winning historian Daniel Francis follows the evolution of the city from early habitation by the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, to the area's settlement as a mill town, to the flourishing speakeasies and brothels during the 1920s, to the years of poverty and protest during the 1930s followed by the long wartime and postwar boom, to the city's current status as real-estate investment choice of the global super-rich. Tracing decades of transformation, immigration and economic development, Francis examines the events and characters that have defined the city's geography, economy and politics. Francis enlivens his text with rich characterizations of the people who shaped Vancouver: determined Chief Joe Capilano, who in 1906 took a delegation to England to appeal directly to King Edward VII for better treatment of Indigenous peoples; brilliant and successful Won Alexander Cumyow, the first recorded person of Chinese descent born in Canada; L.D. Taylor, irrepressible ex-Chicagoan who still holds the record as the city's longest-serving mayor; and tireless activist Helena Gutteridge, suffragist and Vancouver's first woman councillor. Vancouver has been called a city without a history, partly because of its youth but also because of the way it seems to change so quickly. Newcomers to the city, arriving by the thousands every year, find few physical reminders of what was before, making a new history like Becoming Vancouver long overdue."-- Provided by publisher

265 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Tacoma’s vibrant Nihonmachi of the 1920s and '30s was home to a significant number of first generation Japanese immigrants and their second generation American children, and these families formed tight-knit bonds despite their diverse religious, prefectural, and economic backgrounds. As the city’s Nisei grew up attending the secular Japanese Language School, they absorbed the Meiji-era cultural practices and ethics of the previous generation. At the same time, they positioned themselves in new and dynamic ways, including resisting their parents and pursuing lives that diverged from traditional expectations. Becoming Nisei, based on more than forty interviews, shares stories of growing up in Japanese American Tacoma before the incarceration. Recording these early twentieth-century lives counteracts the structural forgetting and erasure of prewar histories in both Tacoma and many other urban settings after World War II. Lisa Hoffman and Mary Hanneman underscore both the agency of Nisei in these processes as well as their negotiations of prevailing social and power relations.

xv, 289 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Following the Second World War, a generation of Seattle parents went against conventional medical wisdom and chose to bring up their children with developmental disabilities in the community. This book presents a stunning visual narrative of thirteen of these remarkable families. With a rich array of interviews, photographs, newspaper clippings, official documents, and personal mementos, photographer Susan Schwartzenberg captures moving recollections of the struggle and perseverance of these parents. Becoming Citizens traces their dogged determination to make meaningful lives for their children in the face of an often hostile system. Breaking the silence that characterizes the history of disability in the United States, Becoming Citizens is a substantive contribution to social and regional history. It demonstrates the ways in which personal experiences can galvanize communities for political action. The centerpiece of the book is the story of four mothers-turned-activists who coauthored Education for All, a crucial piece of Washington State legislation that was a precursor to the national law securing educational rights for every person with a disability in America. Becoming Citizens is a deeply compassionate testament to the experience of family life and disability, as it is to the ways in which ordinary citizens become activists. It will be important to anyone interested in disability studies, including teachers, friends, and families of those with disabilities.

xix, 113 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 28 cm

Becoming Big League is the story of Seattle's relationship with major league baseball from the 1962 World's Fair to the completion of the Kingdome in 1976 and beyond. Bill Mullins focuses on the acquisition and loss, after only one year, of the Seattle Pilots and documents their on-the-field exploits in lively play-by-play sections. The Pilots' underfunded ownership, led by Seattle's Dewey and Max Soriano and William Daley of Cleveland, struggled to make the team a success. They were savvy baseball men, but they made mistakes and wrangled with the city. By the end of the first season, the team was in bankruptcy. The Pilots were sold to a contingent from Milwaukee led by Bud Selig, who moved the franchise to Wisconsin and rechristened the team the Brewers. Becoming Big League describes the character of Seattle in the 1960s and 1970s, explains how the operation of a major league baseball franchise fits into the life of a city, charts Seattle's long history of fraught stadium politics, and examines the business of baseball.

xii, 348 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Idaho…it has one of the most colorful pasts of all the last-frontier states, and the color has not faded with the sunsets of yesteryear. Indeed, the bold pioneers who defied the mighty mountains and parched plains in quest of fortune—and new homes—left sharply etched, as if on stone, their marks of rugged individualism. And the only rubbing off has been on the people who live there today. Idaho is well worth knowing, for to know it is not only to understand how the West was won but why it was worth the winning.

v, 266 pages, 8 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

The Central Library, Benson Hotel, Reed College, the Meier & Frank building, the U.S. National Bank—these are just a few of the grand Portland icons designed by Albert E. Doyle. During a period of rapid growth in Portland, Oregon, after the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition and before the Great Depression, Doyle (1877-1928) was the city’s most important architect. Beauty of the City is the first biography of this celebrated architect. Doyle’s career was short, just twenty-one years. Yet everywhere Portland retains his imprint. Many of Doyle’s classical, often white terra-cotta buildings became venerable city landmarks. He also designed Portland residences, Neahkahnie beach cottages, and houses and banks in Oregon and Washington. Using A. E. Doyle’s own diaries and letters and his firm’s records, historian Philip Niles traces the architect’s life and times in the context of the burgeoning cityscape. As Portland expanded beyond its frontier origins and provincialism, Doyle helped introduce Eastern and European sophistication. Indeed, his refined sensibility influenced the development of the Northwest Regional Style by Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon, among others. Doyle set the standard for elegance and proportion that later architects adapted to more modern styles—his standard defines Portland’s vibrant core and contributes to the city’s beauty as much today as it did 80 years ago. Readers interested in Northwest history and culture will appreciate this compelling and richly illustrated biography of “Portland’s architect.” Likewise, architectural historians and those seeking to better understand Portland’s architectural heritage will enjoy reading of Doyle’s contributions to this celebrated cityscape. “All new things built with the idea of preserving the beauty of the city and adding to it." -A. E. Doyle

xvi, 278 pages : illustrations, map ; 26 cm

Compiled by the Bear Lake County Historical Society, Bear Lake County presents a photographic and spatial ledger documenting the development of the high mountain basin from pioneer pre-emptions through early twentieth-century modernization. The book traces how agricultural settlements, irrigation networks, and rail corridors were superimposed over ancestral Shoshone seasonal hunting grounds. Featuring extensive archival imagery from local family collections, the text documents the architectural vernacular of pioneer brick and stone residences, early logging mills in the Bear River Range, and the recreational development along the turquoise shores of Bear Lake at Fish Haven. Detailed narrative captions record civic milestones and community institutions across Paris, Montpelier, Bloomington, St. Charles, Georgetown, Ovid, and Pegram.

128 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm

Rafe Gibbs’s Beacon for Mountain and Plain: Story of the University of Idaho chronicles the pioneer and institutional history of a land-grant university established amidst the profoundly fractured geography of the Idaho Panhandle. The narrative meticulously maps the rolling, fertile loess topography of the Palouse basin, detailing how this remote agricultural enclave was historically severed from the state's southern population centers by the massive, impassable alpine barrier of the Salmon River Mountains and the precipitous canyons of the Snake River. By detailing the immense logistical hurdles of building a centralized academic hub in such profound physical isolation, the book illustrates how the institution’s foundational mission was strictly dictated by the severe environmental realities of the inland empire. Gibbs highlights how the university was forced to prioritize vital, place-based sciences—specifically pioneering advanced dryland farming techniques to exploit the region's deep, wind-blown prairie soils, and developing rigorous forestry programs to manage the sprawling, heavily timbered slopes of the northern Rockies. Ultimately, the account captures the defining topographical divide of the state, demonstrating how establishing this isolated educational outpost was the absolute prerequisite for both culturally unifying a pioneer populace partitioned by extreme mountain geography and driving the modern, scientific management of its immense natural resources.

x, 420 pages illustrations, portraits, facsimiles 24 cm

Beach of Heaven is a history of the earliest settled areas in Washington. As the birthplace of both the state's canned salmon industry and the cooperative extension movement, as well as Congresswoman Julia Butler Hansen, Wahkiakum County has a historical significance far beyond its borders. Today it stands at the cusp of major change as the rural occupations of fishing, farming, and logging, upon which the country has traditionally depended, suffer from outside influences and demographic shifts. Beach of Heaven documents these changes and looks ahead to future possibilities. This book is much more than a county history. It is a story of the development of a place, of the settlement of ethnic groups, of the establishment of social and transportation networks that made life livable in a wild and forested country. As Irene Martin writes, Beach of Heaven is "an emotional engagement with the place we call home." It will resonate for all who have a passion for the little places, the rural areas, the community values that are gradually passing into history.

xiii, [1], 178 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

On June 17, 1877, gunshots marked the start of war—one that swept twelve-year-old Tah-hy (Chief Joseph’s daughter) and her people into a harrowing journey across the American West. Relentlessly pursued, they endured multiple battles, cold, hunger, and death. Eventually, after months of exile and heartbreak, they began their path to a new way of life. Based on actual events and narrated by Tah-hy’s youthful voice, this biographical novel is intended for young adults, but will also interest older readers. The story presents many aspects of the Nez Perce Dreamer culture and reminds us of what was lost when they were overpowered and displaced.

134 pages : color illustrations ; 21 x 26 cm

This documentary shows the erosion that took place in Bayocean, Oregon with dozens of historic and current photographs, maps, unique cartoons, bibliography, index. The book also Salishan, Nestucca, Cape Lookout State Park, Newport and Jump-Off Joe, the Southern Oregon Coast, Washington's "wash-away" beach, the total destruction of Cape Showalter, and other places.

vi, 206 pages ; 22 cm

Like Plato's fictional island kingdom, most of Bayocean sank below the sea long ago. The rest lies buried beneath the shore pine, salal, and beach grass covering the four-mile-long spit that protects Tillamook Bay from the Pacific Ocean. This book chronicles the half-century this Oregon resort town existed, tells the stories of people who lived there, and explains its demise. Starting in 1907, urbanites in Oregon's Willamette Valley and across the Pacific Northwest were promised a grand resort where they could enjoy cool, ocean breezes during hot summers. Lots sold quickly at first, especially those along Bayocean's one-hundred-foot-high ridgeline where bay and ocean views were breathtaking. But Tillamook's remote location, an economic downturn, and insufficient financial reserves led to delays, litigation, and receivership. Though never grand, at one point or another Bayocean featured a massive natatorium, three hotels, forty-two rental cabins, a two-story mercantile, two restaurants, three dance halls, an amusement pavilion, and fifty-nine homes. Reed College students ran the resort one summer; a military academy for boys tried but failed another. A commune invigorated the town for a couple of years during the Great Depression, as did Coast Guard war dogs during World War II. These and other episodes in Bayocean's history make it more interesting than most, but the fact that nothing remains makes it matter. Erosion began pulling homes into the sea in the late 1920s and undercut the oceanside natatorium in 1932. As the spit's foredune continued to recede, more homes fell. In November 1952 a storm surge blew its narrow southern section into Tillamook Bay. Four years later, the Army Corps of Engineers built a breakwater to reconnect the island to Cape Meares, destroying what remained of the town in the process. It took geologists, geographers, and oceanographers two decades to figure out that the erosion had been caused by faulty jetty planning rather than natural forces. Their work prevented similar environmental disasters from occurring elsewhere. When Jerry Sutherland heard about Bayocean in 2014, he first read everything written about it. He then searched for additional information, traveling across the United States to look through personal and institutional archives. Along the way, he shared some of his discoveries with the public at www.bayocean.net and with the producers of television documentaries. But in his book, Sutherland shares it all.--Publisher

282 pages : illustration, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

Published by maritime historians Bert Webber, Margie Webber, and J.M. Kirkpatrick, Battle Rock: The Hero's Story chronicles the harrowing 1851 clash between a small party of American gold-seekers led by Captain William Tichenor and the local Quat-a-qtie (Tututni) people on the southern Oregon coast. The book details the group's desperate defense atop a rocky sea stack in present-day Port Orford after an initial exploratory landing provoked fierce Indigenous resistance to protect their ancestral territory. Drawing on historical documents, pioneer journals, and local accounts, the text preserves a violent and foundational episode of frontier expansion. A keen insight drawn from the work is how regional historical documentation often elevates colonial survival narratives while obscuring the broader geopolitical trauma; by framing the skirmish through the heroic lens of isolated pioneers under siege, the account masks the reality that the true assault was an unprovoked imperial intrusion onto sovereign Indigenous land.

75 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 22 cm

Text and photos illustrate a variety of barn structures and styles, including hops drying barns. Barns photographed are in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska

112 pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm

Authored collaboratively by the Wasco County Historical Society and the Clackamas County Historical Society, Barlow Road chronicles the construction and historical legacy of the final, grueling overland leg of the historic Oregon Trail. The book traces how Sam Barlow’s 1845 toll road carved a hazardous wagon route around the treacherous southern flank of Mount Hood, offering exhausted pioneers a perilous alternative to navigating the dangerous rapids of the Columbia River. Through archival maps, journals, and photographs, the text details the monumental physical labor required to hack a wagon track through dense old-growth forests and volcanic terrain. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the creation of the Barlow Road transformed a humanitarian struggle into a capitalist enterprise; by privatizing the final mountain obstacle of the migration route, the toll road proved that the westward movement was driven as much by entrepreneurial toll-gate economics as it was by Manifest Destiny.

vii, 97 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm

Barkley Sound a history of the Pacific Rim National Park area examines the deep maritime heritage and rugged coastal settlement situated along the storm-battered western edge of Vancouver Island. Scott details how the region's formidable coastal macro-geography—specifically the labyrinthine, island-choked waters of the sound, the dense, impenetrable temperate rainforests, and the treacherous, reef-strewn outer coast notoriously known as the Graveyard of the Pacific—strictly dictated the margins of indigenous Nuu-chah-nulth maritime culture, early European fur trading, and precarious pioneer outposts. By mapping the evolution of these isolated shores from complex indigenous whaling and fishing hubs into scattered commercial sealing stations, shipwreck lifesaving trails, and eventual protected parklands, the narrative highlights how this specific rugged environment anchored a profound and often fatal reliance on the unrelenting ocean. Ultimately, this regional record serves as a localized spatial history, demonstrating how the immense oceanic exposure, unforgiving navigational hazards, and rich marine ecology of this Pacific Northwest coastline fundamentally shaped the highly resilient, maritime-bound character of Barkley Sound.

278 pages illustrations, facsimile, maps, portraits 23 cm

Richard Thomas Wright’s Barkerville provides a comprehensive historical and spatial account of the urban and commercial capital of the Cariboo Gold Rush along Williams Creek. Wright traces how the discovery of rich placer gold deposits by Billy Barker in 1862 catalyzed the rapid construction of an extensive wooden mining town directly within the mountain watershed long navigated by Indigenous peoples. The work examines the engineering of massive wooden flumes, water wheels, and drift shafts, detailing the catastrophic fire of 1868 and the town’s swift Victorian reconstruction. Wright highlights the vital role of Chinese merchants, laundry operators, and miners who formed an enduring Chinatown community along Williams Creek, tracing how this remote gold metropolis weathered eventual resource depletion to become an internationally recognized provincial historic site.

124 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 28 cm

Authored by longtime southern Oregon resident Granny Abbott, Bandon Tales: Stories of Country Life offers a charming, homespun collection of reminiscences documenting early homesteading, farming, and coastal community life near Bandon during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book captures the unvarnished realities of rural survival, neighborly mutual aid, and domestic routines against the backdrop of raw wilderness and sweeping Pacific shores. Through affectionate and straightforward prose, the text preserves the colloquial voice and everyday folklore of pioneers who carved out an existence on a windswept frontier. A keen insight drawn from the work is how domestic humor and storytelling served as vital psychological currency for frontier women; by framing crushing physical hardships through the lens of wry local comedy, homesteaders built emotional resilience and forged unbreakable social ties that kept isolation at bay.

111 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Maureen Alexander and Andrew S. Brown’s Bamberton: from dust to bust and back explores the intense industrial adaptation, cyclical economic resilience, and evolving environmental stewardship of a unique company town situated along Vancouver Island’s Saanich Inlet. The narrative illustrates how the rugged environmental realities of this coastal topography—defined by deep-water maritime channels, steep forested inclines, and massive, raw limestone deposits—required immense physical labor and cooperative engineering from early workers to establish a vital cement manufacturing enterprise. By detailing the gradual transition from an isolated, bustling industrial settlement united by shared, arduous labor to its eventual economic decline, the text highlights the complex social realities of the region's resource extraction boom-and-bust cycles. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that patiently navigating the town's industrial closure and collaboratively engaging in modern environmental reclamation and civic reimagining are essential steps in transforming a scarred extraction site into a thoughtfully integrated, enduring component of British Columbia’s coastal heritage.

107 p. : ill., ports. ; 23 cm.