Contents
Introduction 3
1. The Region of the Pacific Northwest
2. The Fur Trade Era (1780s - 1840s)
3. The Arrival of Euro-American Settlers
4. The Pacific Northwest's Timber Industry
5. An Environmental Account
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Maps & Tables
page 3: Historical Map of the Pacific Northwest (Oregon Territory).
source: Oregon Historical Society, http://www.ohs.org
page 3: Historical Map of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington
source: Oregon Historical Society, http://www.ohs.org
page 8: Fur Trading Posts in the Pacific Northwest.
source: Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest 78.
page 10: The Oregon Trail.
source: Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest 101.
page 12: Settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute, 1846
source: Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation 331.
page 13: From Territory to Statehood.
source: Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest 254.
page 21: Selected National Parks in the Pacific Northwest Today.
source: Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest 248.
Aus Gründen des Speicherplatzes habe ich diese Karten nicht mit hochgeladen. Ich habe sie allerdings in einer ZIP-Datei (Größe 359 KB). Wer Interesse hat, kann mich anmailen (aranha030@aol.com), dann schicke ich sie per eMail! Und weil die Bilder fehlen, stimmen wohl auch die Seitenangaben im Inhaltsverzeichnis nicht mehr.
Introduction
This paper will be based on the textbook about the Pacific Northwest written by Carlos A. Schwantes, which was first published in 1989, and which John L. Allen describes as "an excellent undergraduate text for courses in Pacific Northwest history", as it includes aspects of historical geography as well as economic and political history. Schwantes defines the region as today's states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, excluding British Colombia for the single reason that the political border between these three states of the USA and the Canadian province is a stronger one than the single borders between Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Given this definition, the Pacific Northwest has one political border (that is the border with Canada to the north), and three natural borders: the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Rocky Mountains to the east, and the Great Basin to the south.
At first glance, it needs to be explained why Idaho is part of the Pacific Northwest, as the state of Idaho does not have a coastline on the Pacific. But in a social, economic, historical, and geographical aspect, these three states share many characteristics: "Several unifying forces operate within this 250,000-square-mile region: the Columbia River and its numerous tributaries, networks of transportation and communication, patterns of trade and commerce, and a special sense of place derived from history and geography." Consequently, Schwantes devotes the first chapter of his book to the effort of passing this special sense of place on to the reader.
I have structured this paper somewhat parallel to Schwantes's book. But as I do not have 500 pages to do it, I skipped some of his aspects, concentrating on a few that I felt were interesting and important not only in themselves but in the bigger picture of our course this semester. One aspect, probably the first one that comes to mind when talking about the Pacific Northwest, is also missing in this paper: modern day Seattle with the Expo's Space Needle, Boeing, and Microsoft. This is simply for the reason that we have had an oral presentation on this city in our course, already. For the same reason, I have excluded the history of the Mormons from this paper, although 30.5 percent of Idaho's population today are Mormons.
In the first chapter, I will try to give my reader Schwantes's sense of place by taking a closer look at the environmental settings of the Pacific Northwest. Moving on, I have structured the paper chronologically, starting with a description of the era when fur trade dominated the Pacific Northwest. Starting in the 1780s, this era lasted until the 1840s. After the trappers, came the settlers. Therefore, I will continue with a description of the history of early Euro-American settlement of the region during the pre-industrial era. In those days of American history, the government set up reservations for American Indians in this region, but the day came, when the white man reached here, too. As the big industries of the late twentieth century will not be part of this paper, I have decided to take a look at the Pacific Northwest economy in earlier days. So, in addition to the chapter on fur trade, another one will be about the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. Both were very vital to the region in their times. Before I come to a conclusion, I will dedicate one chapter of this essay to environmental matters. Ever since the first Euro-American arrived in the region, it had been assumed that the richness of natural resources was practically endless. Is this really the case? What is today's environmental situation in the Pacific Northwest? At the end of the paper, I have added a bibliography containing the data of the past ten years that I have collected. Where I found it necessary, I have also included maps and tables in the chapters, to give the reader some visual help with the topic. One last note: the name "Oregon" throughout most of this paper will be used for the Oregon Territory in its 1848 boundaries, including today's states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. When I mean the state Oregon, I will explicitly say so.
1. The Region of the Pacific Northwest
Traditionally, the Pacific Northwest has supplied raw materials to the rest of the continent and the world, such as furs and skins, timber, wheat and other agricultural produce, fish and other sea foods, or basic and precious metals. "The region's role as supplier of raw materials gave economic life in the Pacific Northwest some special contours. ... Beginning in the 1780s with the trade in furs and skins, Pacific Northwest commodities played important supporting roles in the metropolitan-dominated economic systems of Europe and North America, although the region itself remained a colonial hinterland for the next two centuries and thus was economically vulnerable to forces beyond its control. For several generations the region rode an economic roller coaster that alternated crazily between boom and bust, and no one seemed able to get off." This phenomenon of a "colonial hinterland" is further intensified by the percentage of Pacific Northwesterners living in urban areas being roughly the same as throughout the USA, but unlike the rest of the nation, the urban areas in the Pacific Northwest are also concentrated. This leaves vast stretches of land that are very thinly populated.
The landscape of the Pacific Northwest is dominated by mountains. "In a sense, the entire Pacific Northwest can be described as lying in the mountains' shadow. Few areas are so situated that mountains are not readily visible, and even those anomalous places still experience the influence of mountain ranges on regional weather patterns, vegetation, and economic activities." But the landscape does more than just define the region, it defines its people, too. The Pacific Northwesterners identify themselves with their environment. This can be seen by the fact that "the most repetitive theme in the region's literature is the interaction of people and their natural environment." To preserve this positive identification with the environment, a city like Portland "has municipal regulations that protect `view corridors' through the central city."
In the "mountains' shadow", the climate is quite arid, but along the coast, rainfalls are plentiful. Therefore, we find a stretch of rainforest on the Pacific coast line. Further inland, people get their water from rivers coming down from the mountains. The largest one is the Columbia river, another important one the Snake River. The Columbia River ranks fourth in North America in the amount of water it carries, and it has 40% of the nation's hydro potential. Today, a system of locks makes the river navigable as far as Lewiston, Idaho. Four hundred miles inland and 700 feet above sea level, Lewiston is connected to the ocean.
2. The Fur Trade Era (1780s - 1840s)
Before Cook's third voyage, for which he left on July 12, 1776, the Pacific Northwest was basically unknown to the British and Americans. Cook's mission was to find a northwest passage around the American continent, linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Although Cook did not find the passage they were searching for, the descriptions which his men (and his notes in the log) gave of the region brought the Pacific Northwest to the attention of the English world. Cook's voyage "initiated the region's role as a resource-rich hinterland open to exploitation by more developed parts of the world... and (it) ended the previous pattern of sporadic and haphazard European contact with the Pacific Northwest and its people." These people consisted of roughly 125 tribes, speaking more than fifty different languages. But nothing is known about their total population.
Before Cook, it was mainly the Russians and Spaniards, who explored the region, but neither of them publicised what they found. Russians however had several posts along the coast, one as far south as California. Originally, the Russians came for fur, when the demand in Europe and China was greater than what Scandinavia and Siberia could supply. In 1784, they founded the first European settlement in Northern Pacific America on Kodiak Island. The first settlement in the actual Pacific Northwest was a Spanish one in 1792, but it was abandoned after only four months. It took almost twenty years before another attempt of erecting a settlement in the region was made.
After Cook's voyage, Nootka - a place where he had stopped for repairs - became the centre of maritime fur trade, where European and American ships made ports of call. Because the Pacific Northwest was such a long sea journey from European and American markets, China was the main customer for these furs. "In a typical transaction, the Indians exchanged sea otter pelts for such trade goods as sheets of copper, heavy blue cloth, or muskets, powder, and shot. Inventive traders are also known to have swapped a ship's curtains, anchor, crockery, and even a Japanese flag for furs or fresh food. Prices varied over time, so that the cost of a sea otter's skin inflated from one to five muskets during the late nineteenth century. In China, Euro-Americans traded the pelts for tea, porcelain, silk, and similar items that commanded high prices in Europe or on the Atlantic seaboard."
When Nootka developed into the centre of maritime fur trade, one problem arose. It was unclear, which European (or American) power had an imperial claim to it. As of the late fifteenth century, Spain claimed the western parts of the American continent to be its own, but the further north these lands were, the more it became obvious that this claim was unrealistic. Not only were there no Spaniards in the Pacific Northwest, but Russians, British, and Americans were not willing to accept the Spanish point-of-view. The Russians already had bases in the larger region, so they had a point when they made claims. A Spanish expedition had been to Nootka, but it did not formally take possession of it, and the records of the expedition were never published. So although Spain had a claim, it was a weak one. England had the claim that Cook's expedition had been there. Although Cook did not formally take possession of Nootka, either, at least the records of the expedition were published - and they contained a description of Nootka.
The French had sent an expedition there, too, but it never returned. With the unrest of the revolution, French interest in the American continent dwindled. However, since thirteen colonies declared independence in 1776, there was suddenly a new power that had an interest in the region. The USA was the only power that was actually on the same continent as the disputed region, and with the loss of the British markets, they were looking for new fields of action. In 1819, Spain signed the Adams-Onís-Treaty and gave up all claims north of the 42nd parallel to the USA. A few years later, in 1824/25, Russia gave up all claims to the area south of 54°40', the southernmost tip of the Alaska panhandle. Thus, the region that became known as Oregon was created, and the two powers that now had a claim on it were Great Britain and the USA. In negotiations, no solution was found. Britain and the USA decided to leave the region in joint possession until a later date. This date was not to come until 1846.
Maritime fur trade, which had unexpectedly started in the 1790s, was a booming business until its decline in the wake of the War of 1812. This was for several reasons. First of all, the fur traders were setting up too many traps, causing a decline in the animal population. To get furs, trappers had to go further inland. When American fur companies tried to do this, they were not always met by success. So, the American business world lost interest. On the British side, however, interest and involvement were still strong. The Canadian North West Company was the largest fur enterprise in the region. "By arrangement with American shipowners, the `soft gold' traveled from Fort George to markets in China. This mutually beneficial arrangement was a response to the East India Company's trading monopoly, which froze other British but not American traders out of China."
In 1821, however, the British government forced the merger of the North West Company with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). This had several consequences. The HBC moved the region's headquarters from Fort George a hundred miles upstream the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver (today's Vancouver, Washington). Besides the fact that this was a better harbour, the idea was also that Fort Vancouver was on the northern shore of the river. If Oregon was to be divided along the Columbia River - which has always been the British plan - Fort Vancouver would have stayed British. Initially, there were considerations of the HBC to abandon activities in the Pacific Northwest, as the quality of the furs there was poorer than of those caught near the HBC's centre of activity; however, the quantity of fur caught in the Pacific Northwest was so much greater that there was still plenty of money to be made there.
The HBC first started to diversify life in the Pacific Northwest. Its officials did not grant the employees too much leisure time. They wanted higher profits. So they ordered them to start farming the land, cutting down on costs for providing food stuffs, and eventually producing enough to make profits by selling it. To strengthen these activities, the HBC launched a subsidiary in 1839: the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company. Still, settlers remained few in the Pacific Northwest, and those who came did not associate themselves with the HBC and its band of trappers. "All that was lacking to make the Hudson's Bay Company farms a long-term success was settlers who were willing to remain subject to the paternalism of the company."
Starting in the 1820s, a new kind of trapper arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Had it been company men before, the region now saw the arrival of independent mountain men. Being independent, they did not have the bases for operations that the big companies had. So instead, they introduced the rendezvous system. To cut overheads, it replaced permanent trading posts. Instead, the trappers would meet once a season at an appointed place, and trade their "pelts for a year's supply of goods sent west from St. Louis by pack animals and wagons."
Parallel to this, the HBC implemented a "scorched earth" policy that would eventually turn the region into a "fur desert". This was done for a single aim: to "keep Americans out of the Columbia River region and thereby bolster British territorial claims in anticipation of the day when an international boundary would divide the Oregon country."
The picture changed with the arrival of the first permanent Euro-American settlers. For the trading posts, which had been catering to the needs of trappers, they too were good customers, but the merchandise they desired was of a different nature. Arriving at a trading post after a long and tiresome overland journey along the Oregon Trail, the settlers wanted meat. This now made it more profitable for Indians and trappers alike to hunt for food rather than fur. This change in the nature of economy cut the profits in the fur trade. Also, with more arrivals of Euro-American settlers, Indian unrest in the region grew. "Population growth and commerce in furs was incompatible. Wherever the farmer appeared, fur trappers and traders retreated into an ever-shrinking domain. ... The fur trade era inaugurated the role of the Pacific Northwest as a colony whose natural resources were ripe for outsiders to exploit. ... The era of fur trade revealed economic attitudes and patterns that were to be replicated in the future and with far greater impact upon the region's natural environment." In the mid 1850s, the HBC abandoned its posts at Fort Hall and Fort Boise.
3. The Arrival of Euro-American Settlers
For the Pacific Northwest, the years between 1834 and 1848 can be described as the mission era. Although the success of the missionaries with the Indian population can at best be described as mixed, they "did play a role in better defining the Pacific Northwest in Euro-American minds and thereby helped to encourage pioneer settlement of a distant corner of North America." The reasons why their missions lacked success were of different natures. But a major factor was the differences between the single denominations who were bad mouthing each other. This is not only true for the differences between Protestants and Catholics, who were identified with the HBC and British rule in Oregon, but also for the differences between the several Protestant sects.
In 1843, the first large contingent of Euro-American settlers arrived in Oregon accompanied by missionary Marcus Whitman. The group included around 900 settlers with 100 wagons plus 700 oxen and cattle. Called "the Great Migration", this group "was the first to get its wagons intact to the Columbia River."
The numbers of arriving settlers rose steadily, from 900 in 1843 to around 5,000 persons in 1847, adding up to 53,000 migrants in the two decades between 1840 and 1860. Most of these settlers came on the Oregon Trail, only very few by ship around the southern tip of South America. The Oregon Trail was not an easy journey. It is estimated that 10 percent of the people died on the journey, mostly of disease and accident, only very few in Indian attacks: "The Oregon Trail has been called the world's longest graveyard, with one body, on average, buried about every eighty yards. People lost their lives to swollen rivers, quicksand, rattlesnakes, and accidents ... However the number one killer on the trail was disease."
The journey took about seven months. The settlers started in Missouri in April, timing it so that their livestock could feed of the Great Plains in the right season. Crossing the Great Plains might have been tedious, but it was not nearly as difficult as the route through the Rocky Mountains. Using the South Pass, which was first described in 1824, the journey took an average of 169 days in the 1840s. By the 1850s, the route had been modified, several short cuts had been found, and knowledge about the Oregon Trail was better. The average trip now took 128 days.
For many settlers, the reason for coming was the hope for better farming conditions. "In an agrarian society that measured wealth in terms of landholdings, the belief that Oregon contained an abundance of fertile land easily acquired under federal laws was compelling. Not surprisingly, many Oregon-bound pioneers were impoverished farm families from the Ohio and Missouri valleys."
The rise in numbers of U. S. citizens arriving in Oregon went together with renewed official interest in the region. At the beginning of the century, the U. S. government had dispatched the Lewis and Clark expedition to the region, but since then it had taken no further steps. Now, it sent out two more expeditions. The first one was the United States Exploring Expedition (1838-42), also known as the Wilkes expedition. This one was by sea. The other one, known as the Frémont expedition (1843), was by land. As a result of these two, the full value of Pacific Northwestern resources was recognized in Washington, D.C. In combination with the expansionist feeling of the time, the theory of Manifest Destiny, this had to lead to tensions with Great Britain. Several attempts had been made to clarify the power situation in the Pacific Northwest, but until 1846, the region was under shared control by the USA and Britain. For British citizens this meant that their authority was the HBC, representing the London government in this remote corner of the Empire. For American citizens this basically meant that there was no authority.
The settlers took steps for organizing public life for themselves. At first, they tried to find ad hoc solutions for specific issues. In May 1843, a group of 100 settlers, American and French Canadian, met to form a first provisional government. The HBC refused to recognize this act, but the settlers continued to work within their framework and even started to collect taxes.
In 1844, James K. Polk was elected President on an expansionist platform with the slogan "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!" Especially Democrats from the Midwest had strong feelings on this point. Edward Hannegan, one Indiana Senator, proclaimed: "Oregon - every foot or not an inch; 54 degrees and forty minutes or delenda est Britannia." 54° 40' was the southern tip of Russian Alaska, and the northern border of Oregon. However, it was unrealistic that the USA could really put a claim on the entire territory, over which they shared control with the British. After the elections, Polk made a more realistic proposal to the British to draw the line along the 49th parallel, but the British insisted on having the Columbia River as the border. Quite a logic demand, as north of that line there were hardly any U. S. citizens, but plenty of British business interests. The reason for Polk to insist on the 49th parallel was Puget Sound, the only useable natural harbour of the Pacific Northwest, which was very important to expanding U. S. interests in the Pacific. The year 1846 saw new negotiations. This time both sides were under pressure to come to an agreement. Britain suffered a government crisis in London, and the USA was on the brink of war with Mexico. Both nations agreed on the 49th parallel as the border all the way to the coast, but excluding Vancouver Island; also, the HBC retained the right to navigate the Columbia River. One point that made it easy for Britain to accept, were considerations by the HBC to move its headquarters once more, from Fort Vancouver to Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island.
Between 1846 and 1848, Oregon continued its way of provisional government, but in 1848 it was declared a U. S. territory. In 1853, this territory was divided. Oregon took on the borders of today's state, and a second territory was created: Washington, although its population was hardly numerous enough to grant it that status. This territory was still larger than today's state, as it still included Idaho. Six years later, in 1859, Oregon was admitted into the Union as the 33rd state. The population voted for the constitution with 7,195 votes against 3,195. Two additional ballots were cast: a majority of 75 percent decided against slavery, and a majority of 89 percent decided to prohibit free blacks and mulattos to settle in Oregon! Washington and Idaho were not states yet. In a next wave of admitting states into the Union, Washington became the 42nd state in 1889, Idaho the 43rd in 1890.
The new governor of Washington, Stevens, also functioned as Indian agent and chief of a national railroad survey project. He forced the Indians of the Pacific Northwest in negotiations to sign away 45,000 square miles of land, confining them to reservations that limited their movement, a fact that was especially hard on the seminomadic tribes of the interior.
Probably the greatest influx of new settlers came with the discovery of gold in the Washington Territory. In August 1860, the precious metal was found near Oro Fino Creek, located in today's Idaho, but in 1860 the land actually belonged to the Nez Perce Indians. It only took a year, and at the site of the discovery was "a jerry-built collection of tents and nondescript structures fashioned from hand-hewn logs and whipsawed lumber (which) grandiloquently called itself Pierce City." Only three miles away was another gold town consisting of 75 buildings: Oro Fino City. Soon, more gold was discovered further south, and in 1866 the "Boise Basin yielded $20 million worth of gold." The gold region had become the centre of population in the Washington Territory. The new town of Idaho City, founded in 1862, had a population of 6,275 residents only a year later. By 1865, it possessed most of the conveniences of any major city of that time. But it must also be remembered that many of these mining towns did not survive and were abandoned once there was no more gold to be found. Others survived only after being downsized considerably. One problem caused by the gold rush was that the government of the giant territory was in Olympia on the coast at Puget Sound, and a long way away from the gold rush region, too far away to administer the process. So when Olympia residents already feared that the new city of Walla Walla would take away their status of being the territory's capital, a new territory was formed: Idaho. This new territory was still much larger though than today's state, so in 1864 it was split again into the territories of Montana and of Idaho. Washington was downsized considerably, and kept Olympia as its capital.
One important circumstance about this Washington Territory gold rush is the fact that it started during the Civil War. So, "besides creating considerable excitement and much personal wealth, the Pacific Northwest mining boom of the 1860s infused the U.S. economy [that is the Union side, sba] with badly needed gold during the Civil War." Maybe this is partly the reason, the government took no steps whatsoever to protect the land it had assigned to the Indians only a few years ago.
Although the Pacific Northwest stayed with the Union in the Civil War, it nonetheless displayed racist tendencies. In the days of the fur trade, the region was as multi racial as one could imagine. The companies brought employees to the region no matter what their ethnic background. There were Caucasians, Scots, French, and Swiss, Blacks, Polynesians, Chinese, Hawaiians, and Indians from tribes all over North America. We already saw hat Oregon passed legislature prohibiting Blacks from settling there. But there were many more laws enforcing the white Euro-American rule that had evolved as a result from the great migration which had started in the 1840s, making it difficult, even impossible for other races to settle in the region.
When, in the 1870s, construction of railroads began in the Pacific Northwest, the ethnic mosaic changed once more. Chinese laborers came into the land, and helped build the infrastructure which later made it possible for large numbers of people to come in from the eastern parts of America. The first railroads served local needs more than anything else. It took until 1883 that the railroad joined the region to the rest of the USA. However, the Chinese, who helped build this means of transportation, were later excluded from further immigration to the country.
On September 8, 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed along the Oregon Trail, joining the Great Lakes with Portland and the Puget Sound, and started replacing the wagon treks. The completion of this transcontinental railroad line marked the beginning of a new era in which the Pacific Northwest "moved inexorably into a postfrontier world." This time was characterised by quick overall change, rapid economic growth, and large population increase.
4. The Pacific Northwest's Timber Industry
"An estimated seventy million acres of commercial forest land once blanketed the Pacific Northwest. Douglas fir, spruce, hemlock, and cedar were the predominant species west of the Cascade Range; ponderosa pine was dominant on the eastern slopes, and western white pine in the panhandle of Idaho. No economic activity is today more closely identified in the popular mind with the Pacific Northwest than logging and sawmilling, and for good reason. In 1910, when Washington was the nation's number one lumber-producing state, 63 percent of its wageworkers depended upon the forest products industry for jobs. That number remained well above 50 percent for many years."
The first sawmill in the Pacific Northwest was operated by the HBC in 1827. It expanded operations, shipping lumber as far as Hawaii. In 1850, Portland had a steam driven mill, but many more were hydro powered. Historian Gordon B. Dodds describes the lumber business as "the earliest, longest lasting, and, for many years, most dynamic industry in the Northwest."
When San Francisco, California, was in large parts destroyed by a fire in the early 1850s, demand for timber went up. The Pacific Northwest saw a mill rush, almost like the later gold rush. In 1852-53, several milltowns were founded on Puget Sound, "where the waters never froze and thick forest lined the shores." One of them, Port Gamble, was the first company town of the region, physically resembling the older New England mill towns. Other company towns, like Port Blakely or Port Ludlow followed. The Puget Sound lumber fleet at one time numbered around 150 ships, supplying lumber to California, Hawaii, and Asia. After the turn of the century, when lower railroad fares made it possible, lumber from the Pacific Northwest competed with lumber from the Great Lakes throughout the USA. On the way there, Pacific Northwestern lumber was used to build large parts of this very railroads: ties, bridge timbers, stations, and other trackside structures. More than that, to transport the lumber to the coast, special narrow-gauge logging railroads were built.
Technical progress changed Pacific Northwestern lumber industry over the years. New tools and techniques allowed higher quantities of felled trees per laborer. And what is true for logging is also true for sawmilling. Profits rose. In 1876, circular saws gave way to band saws, which "decreased waste and increased by ten times the amount of lumber a mill could cut in a day." Sustainability was a principle totally unknown to this industry in those days.
Although the timber industry got off to a booming start in the middle of the nineteenth century, its great age was yet to come. It dawned with the turn of the century, when the wood supplies in the Great Lakes region were dwindling, and railroads made it possible for lumber from the Pacific Northwest to compete nationwide. Railroad magnate James J. Hill was in bad need for financing, and sold 900,000 acres of Douglas fir forest to Frederick Weyerhaeuser and his associates for six dollars an acre on January 3, 1900. Over the next three years, Weyerhaeuser and his associates tried to buy up as many missing units of timberland "to fill in the checkerboard squares that were missing from the original purchase and (to assure) efficient timber management." The reason that there were squares missing in the original purchase was the system according to which railroad companies were granted their land. Along the future railroad line (as throughout the USA), land was surveyed and allotted in squares. Like a checkerboard, one square was given to the railroad company, another one to a settler, and so on. This giant investment started a "great rush" of capitalists buying timberland in the Pacific Northwest. All the investment payed off in 1906 with yet another fire and an earthquake in San Francisco. To meet the Californian demand, the mills in the Pacific Northwest had to run extra shifts. With profits like this, the Weyerhaeuser family owned 26 percent of Washington's timberlands, and almost 20 percent of Oregon's. Timber production in the Pacific Northwest almost tripled in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century. In 1905, Washington became the USA's leading lumber producing state, only to be replaced by Oregon in 1938.
As time passed, the big lumber companies of the region had not only timberland in their possession but also land which they had logged-off already. In order to dispose of these lands, lumber companies were active in the recruiting of new settlers, in advertising the area on the East Coast, even in Europe: "Thousands of acres of `virgin logged-off land' of proved fertility awaited development, or so claimed one Potlatch Lumber Company brochure, Fertile Logged-Off Lands of Latah County, Idaho."
"Ruinous competition, overproduction, market chaos, and dependence on railroad rates to compete in distant markets plagued the lumber business. ... Operators formed the West Coast Lumbermen's Association in 1911 to establish industry-wide standards and marketing practices, but the problem of chronic instability endured." The 1909 discovery "of the sulfate or Kraft process to transform commercially worthless wood ... into newsprint", helped mitigate this instability, by the 1920s, paper mills were an important part in Pacific Northwestern economy, the region became one of the USA's leading producers of pulp and paper.
A critical time in the history of the Pacific Northwest's timber industry was Theodore Roosevelt's Presidency. Federal (timber-)land reserves had always existed, but Roosevelt expanded them even further and declared them National Forests, a term he coined in 1907. Businessmen in the Pacific Northwest had an eye on these lands, wishing to exploit them, and many critics believed, this was a question of states' rights. They accused the federal government of paralyzing the region's economic growth. Roosevelt's opponents were not successful in getting their hands on the federal land, but in 1908, the Senate "forbid any further expansion of national forests in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho." But until today, the Pacific Northwest has thirty-four national forests, totalling more than 44 million acres. And although this is an impressive figure, it seems as if it was not to be avoided that sooner or later the interest of the timber industry would clash with those of the environment.
5. An Environmental Account
`Endless' and `inexhaustible' were only two words that had frequently been used by the early Euro-American settlers to describe the nature of the Pacific Northwest. This inevitably caused an attitude of exploiting nature beyond a limit where nature itself could recover and reproduce what it had lost. The earliest example of this is probably the decline of the maritime fur trade, caused by a dramatic decline of the sea otter population. The fur traders however, did not pay much attention to these signs of warning, instead they moved further inland to hunt for the furs of other animals.
Years later, timber was the main resource that was used on an industrial scale in the Pacific Northwest. Closely linked to logging and sawmilling, the traditional timber industries, is paper milling, another strong economic factor in the Pacific Northwest. These industries all had an impact on the environment of the region.
For decades, the timber industry obeyed to a "cut and run" philosophy, believing that there would always be more trees, more forests to cut. Only very few companies invested in reforestation. Yet reforestation caused people to believe that lumber was a "renewable resource". There is, unfortunately, only very little truth in this, as it only takes about fifteen minutes to fell a tree 600 years old, and it takes at least 30 to 40 years to grow a new tree worth felling! Also, old-growth forests are completely different ecosystems than newly planted tree farms, which do not have "the biodiversity of a mossy old-growth forest." "Cut and run" and the myth of the renewable resource led inevitably to wasteful practises. To log cheap and efficiently, 24,000 cubic feet of wood were wasted per acre. "When this slash ignited, it burned at temperatures as high as 1,814 degrees and consumed not only the slash but 89 percent of the duff layer on the forest floor. The seedlings that sprang up from fallen seeds in the wake of logging were often destroyed in these fires, which left unpromising conditions for any new trees that might follow them."
With ever smaller areas of these old-growth forests, the northern spotted owl became a very prominent symbol for the preservation of nature. The reason for this was the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the fact that the USA did not have an "Endangered Ecosystem Act". So, "environmentalists seized upon the endangered status of this rare, seldom-seen bird in an effort to save its habitat, the dwindling old-growth forests ..."
In the 1980s, fighting over these matter became more intense. Timber employees fearing for their jobs, and timber employers fearing for their profits, joined forces against environmentalists. This fight was not always carried out by peaceful means. The years 1989/90 brought a series of court decisions granting the spotted owl its habitat and limiting - but not stopping - logging in old-growth forests. And although it is true that on the Olympic peninsula, "timber harvests plunged to just 14 percent of their 1970s peak" due to court decisions, this is not the only reason for a dramatic loss of jobs in this industry. Large amounts of raw timber were exported to be processed in sawmills in Asia, because of cheaper labor costs - in 1988, this amounted to a quarter of the total cut of the two states Oregon and Washington!
In April 1993, President Clinton convened a "Forest Summit", and later that year, his administration presented a plan for the Pacific Northwest that would reduce logging in old-growth forests. Nine thousand jobs, it said would be lost, but the government provided "a $1.2 billion aid package to help (the) timber communities."
Another one of the Pacific Northwest's natural treasures, Puget Sound, had to suffer from the paper and pulp industry. As early as the 1920s, residents complained about pulp liquor flowing untreated into the sound, especially fishermen and oyster growers feared that their fish and oysters would no longer survive this pollution. In 1951, a federal report declared Puget Sound the sixth most polluted area in the USA.
Commercial fishermen allied themselves with politically influential sportfishermen, to lobby their interests on state and national levels. They were not successful fighting the paper mills, but in 1923 fish traps were banned in Oregon, in 1928 in Washington. This had but little effect, as new technologies made other ways of fishing more efficient. A fishing industry equipped with net-fishing boats powered by internal-combustion engines, and equipped with hydraulic powered winches does no longer need fish traps to overfish its waters. With ever increasing overfishing, the alliance between commercial fishermen and sportfishermen was not to last. With time to come, there was a third party with an interest in the state of fisheries: the Indians. In two treaties, signed in 1854 and 1855, the natives of the Pacific Northwest were guaranteed "the right to continue fishing at all their traditional locations regardless of state laws." Now, in the Boldt decision, the Indians of Puget Sound were entitled to half of all fish that passed, or normally would pass, ... and that could be caught without endangering the runs." Needless to say, judge Boldt was not the most popular person with the white fishermen.
Limiting the number of fish that may be caught is only one measure, though. It needs other supporting measures to have any positive effect. The size of the fishing-nets needs to be regulated, so that the fish caught are - presumably - the older and bigger ones, not the young ones that can and will still reproduce. Also, steps need to be taken to clean up the waters. In 1985, the legislature of Washington state formulated a long-term clean-up plan. The costs for cleaning up Puget Sound are estimated to range from $4 billion to $14 billion.
The 1860s gold rush left relatively little pollution, something that cannot be said about the mining industry in later years. Idaho has severe pollution problems, especially with the heavy metal levels in the Coeur d'Alene River and Lake, which, in 1992, has been rated the world's most heavy metal-contaminated site. But the mining industry in the Pacific Northwest not only contaminated water, it also polluted the air. The Silver Valley with its smelter at Kellogg, operating from 1917 until 1981, had the highest recorded levels of sulfur dioxide gas in the USA. It "made the soil so acidic that it could not support plant life, and the forest and mountain landscape ... became almost lunaresque in its bleakness."
Another problem the Pacific Northwest is facing is the declining number of salmon. Caused mainly by the construction of countless dams since the mid-1930s, it became more and more difficult for the fish to get upstream to hatch. From a historic level of 16 million salmon, their number had decreased to 2.5 million by the 1980s. In the early 1990s, although the total number has again increased a little, the actual population of wild salmon is down to about 500,000. Again, environmentalist interests clash with those of the business world. Lowering the water levels behind the dams to allow the fish to move naturally along the rivers, would halt barge traffic for several months.
Slowly, there are various steps being taken to preserve the natural resources for generations to come. Probably the most prominent examples are the Pacific Northwest's National Parks. These are joined by other areas of similar status like the so-called National Recreation Areas or Scenic Areas. And today, it has been recognized that preserving nature is not always hindering economy. Scenic areas in the Pacific Northwest, today generate millions of tourist dollars, providing numerous families with an income.
The most frightening figures of careless treatment of the environment are certainly the ones from the various nuclear sites of the region. When man first started attempts to control the atom, he did not realize the potential dangers that lay within this technology. Between 1944 and 1947, the Hanford site released radioactive gas amounting up to about 40,000 times of what had been released by the accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. The Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, between 1957 and 1963, released even more radioactive gas into the atmosphere: about ten times the amount of Hanford, about 400,000 times the amount of Three Mile Island! Nuclear technology produces nuclear waste, and there is plenty of that in the Pacific Northwest. Up until today, no final solution for this problem has been found. Currently, careful management of the sites, and the hope that no accident occurs are the only ways of dealing with the situation.
Despite all these problems, the Pacific Northwest is still rich in nature, it has managed to preserve desirable qualities. But the attitude towards nature is ever changing. With the 1990s, decisions for development of the region are being made with greater care. The main key today, is to keep development sustainable.
Conclusion
In five chapters, I have looked at different aspects of the Pacific Northwest. Yet, all these aspects had an influence on each other. In certain times, business triggered immigration and vice versa. People and economy influenced the environment, yet the environment was the initial resource upon which industries were built; and it still makes people come to the region. So although these five chapters dealt with different aspects, none of them can really stand for itself. They are integral parts of one another.
Today, the Pacific Northwest has lost much of its hinterland character. The USA today is increasingly linked to markets in Asia, which transformed ports like Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma from continental backdoors to strategic gateways. One advantage of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, is the circumstance that it is a day's sailing time closer to Asia than the competing Californian ports. The Pacific Northwest, to put it ironically, has now become "Japan's new opportunity-rich Pacific Northeast." However, what has not changed is the region's dependence. Its industries, though they have diversified over the years, are still largely dependant not only on other markets, but also on investment capital from abroad. Nature is the second factor that almost everything in the Pacific Northwest depends on. Its industries largely depend on its resources, and its newest industry - tourism - depends on the country's beauty. "The sea, the soil, and the forest are principal means of livelihood."
In this position, the Pacific Northwest can be characterised as being in a juxtaposition of metropolitan trendsetter and hinterland, as it is still the landscape of the remote parts which triggered population growth throughout the 1980s. Forty four percent of Idaho's territory, and 27 percent of Oregon's have less than two persons per square mile - the traditional definition for a `frontier'. This is precisely, what most people came for who accounted for a rapid increase in population during the past two decades. Ironically, by coming to a less crowded region, they partly crowded the region themselves. Many individuals of the "new immigration" came from California, and it is the biggest fear of most "old" Pacific Northwesterners that their region could become "like California." Prices for land and housing have already gone up considerably.
Another fairly recent development is a boom in tourism. In many places, tourism has replaced older industries, such as mining or logging, and it has created new jobs that were lost in those. But tourism jobs, for a great part, are near minimum wage service jobs, paying the worker a lot less than mining or logging used to, Therefore, with rising prices for housing, many working people have to commute distances as far as 100 miles a day back and forth. Another negative aspect of the tourism boom is its interference with nature. Many resorts were planned and located where they disturb local wildlife. Schwantes also mentions the looks of these resorts. Tourist architecture is a matter of taste. I agree with him that sometimes they do look rather hideous, but the looks do not pose a threat to the environment.
Awareness for such problems has increased, and will continue doing so. The final word about the development of the Pacific Northwest has not yet been spoken. Several factors, like tourism, population growth, and industrial interests, have to be observed. These interests have to interact with the environmental settings of the Pacific Northwest. Through careful planning and development, this region, which is so rich in its natural resources, might be saved for the future. Therefore, the future development of the Pacific Northwest has to be closely watched, it might bring up new challenges, and it certainly will be just as interesting as its past.
Bibliography
In addition to the standard works on Pacific Northwest history, I have collected the bibliographical data on this subject of the past ten years.
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---. The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West. Tucson: 1993.
---. "Regional City and Network City: Portland and Seattle in the Twentieth Century." Western Historical Quarterly 23 (August 1992): 293-319.
Abbott, Carl, and Deborah Howe. "The Politics of Land-Use Law in Oregon: Senate Bill 100, Twenty Years After." Oregon Historical Quarterly 94 (spring 1993): 4-35.
Aiken, Katherine G. "`It May Be Too Soon to Crow': Bunker Hill and Sullivan Company's Efforts to Defeat the Miners' Union, 1890-1900." Western Historical Quarterly 24 (August 1993): 309-331.
Ajo, James A. The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism. Seattle: 1990.
Alborn, Denise M. "Crimping and Shanghaiing on the Columbia River." Oregon Historical Quarterly 93 (fall 1992): 262-291.
Allen, John L. "Book Review: Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes. The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History. Lincoln: 1989." The American Historical Review 95 (1990): 1641.
Arrington, Leonard J. "The Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919 in Southern Idaho." Idaho Yesterdays 33 (fall 1988): 19-29.
Ashby, LeRoy., and Rod Gramer. Fighting the Odds: The Life of Senator Frank Church. Pullman: 1994.
Barker, Rocky. Saving All the Parts: Reconciling Economics and the Endangered Species Act. Washington, D. C.: 1993.
Beals, Herbert K., trans. Juan Pérez on the Northwest Coast: Six Documents of His Expedition in 1774. Portland: 1989.
Berner, Richard C. Seattle 1900-1920: From Boomtown, Urban Turbulence, to Restoration. Seattle: 1991.
---. Seattle 1921-1940: From Boom to Bust. Seattle: 1992.
Bingham, Edwin R., and Glen A. Love, eds. Northwest Perspectives: Essays on the Culture of the Pacific Northwest. Eugene [et al]: 1979.
Blair, Karen J., ed. Women in Pacific Northwest History: An Anthology. Seatlle: 1988.
Boag, Peter G. Environment and Experience: Settlement Culture in Nineteenth-Century Oregon. Berkeley: 1992.
Booth, Brian, ed. Wildmen, Wobblies and Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook's Lowbrow Northwest. Corvallis: 1992.
Bordwell, Constance. "Delay and Wreck of the Peacock: An Episode in the Wilkes Expedition." Oregon Historical Quarterly 92 (summer 1991): 117-198.
Brewster, David, and David M. Buerge. Washingtonians: A Bibliographical Portrait of the State. Seattle: 1988.
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. New York [et al]: 1993.
Britton, Diane F. The Iron and Steel Industry in the Far West: Irondale, Washington. Niwot: 1991.
Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty the Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. New York: 1991.
Carriker, Robert C. Father Peter John De Smet: Jesuit in the West. Norman: 1995.
Casner, Nicholas A. "Toxic River: Politics and Coeur d'Alene Mining Pollution in the 1930s." Idaho Yesterdays 35 (fall 1991): 2-19.
Colson, Dennis C. Idaho's Constitution: The Tie that Binds. Moscow: 1991.
Copeland, Tom. The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies. Seattle: 1993.
Cox, Thomas R. The Park Builders: A History of State Parks in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: 1988.
Cutter, Donald C. Malaspina and Galiano: Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast, 1791 and 1792. Seattle: 1991.
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle: 1988.
Dietrich, William. The Final Forest.: The Battle for the Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest. New York: 1992.
Dodds, Gordon B. The American Northwest: A History of Oregon and Washington. Arlington Heights, Illinois: 1986.
Dodds, Gordon B., and Craig E. Wollner. The Silicon Forest: High Tech in the Portland Area, 1945-1986. Portland: 1990.
Duncan, Dayton. Miles from Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier. New York: 1993.
Edwards, G. Thomas. Sowing Good Seeds: The Northwest Suffrage Campaigns of Susan B. Anthony. Portland: 1990.
---. "Walla Walla: Gateway to the Pacific Northwest Interior." Montana, the Magazine of Western History 40 (summer 1990): 29-43.
Edwards, G. Thomas, and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, eds. Experiences in a Promised Land: Essays in Pacific Northwest History. Seattle [et al]: 1986.
Egan, Timothy. The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest. New York: 1990.
Engemann, Richard H. "The `Seattle Spirit' Meets The Alaskan: A Story of Business, Boosterism, and the Arts." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 81 (April 1990): 54-66.
Etulain, Richard W., ed. Basques of the Pacific Northwest. Pocatello: 1991.
Ficken, Robert E. "Weyerhaeuser and the Pacific Northwest Timber Industry, 1899-1903." In Experiences in a Promised Land: Essays in Pacific Northwest History, edited by G. Thomas Edwards, and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes. Seattle [et al]: 1986. 139-152.
Ficken, Robert E., and Charles P. LeWarne. Washington: A Centennial History. Seattle: 1989.
Findlay, John M. "Closing the Frontier in Washington: Edmond S. Meany and Frederick Jackson Turner." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 82 (April 1991): 59-70.
Fisher, Robin. Vancouver's Voyage: Charting the Northwest Coast, 1791-1795. Seattle: 1992.
Fuller, George W. A History of the Pacific Northwest. New York: 1941.
Gaboury, William J. Dissention in the Rockies: A History of Idaho Populism. New York: 1988.
Gamboa, Erasmo. Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947. Austin: 1990.
---. "Mexican Mule Packers and Oregon's Second Regiment Mounted Volunteers, 1855- 1856." Oregon Historical Quarterly 92 (spring 1991): 41-59.
---. "Washington's Mexican Heritage: A View into the Spanish Explorations, 1774-1792." Columbia 3 (fall 1989): 40-45.
Garfield, Leonard. "At Home in Washington." Columbia 4 (spring 1990): 36-45.
Gerber, Michele Stenehjem. On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site. Lincoln: 1992.
Gibson, James R. Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841. Seattle: 1992.
Gough, Barry M. The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and Discoveries to 1812. Vancouver: 1992.
Graebner, Norman A. "The Northwest Coast in World Diplomacy, 1790-1846." In The Changing Pacific Northwest: Interpreting Its Past, edited by David H. Stratton, and George A. Frykman. Pullman, Washington: 1988. 3-22.
Graff, Leo W., Jr. The Senatorial Career of Fred T. DuBois of Idaho, 1890-1907. New York: 1988.
Griffiths, David B. Populism in the Western United States, 1890-1900. 2 vols., Lewiston, NY: 1992.
Hart, Arthur A. Camera Eye on Idaho: Pioneer Photography, 1863-1913. Caldwell, ID: 1990.
Hidy, Ralph W., Muriel E. Hidy, and Roy V. Scott, with Don L. Hofsommer. The Great Northern Railway: A History. Boston: 1988.
Horowitz, David. "The Klansman as Outsider: Ethnocultural Solidarity and Antielitism in the Oregon Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 80 (January 1989): 12-20.
Howay, Frederic W., ed. Voyages of the "Columbia" to the Northwest Coast, 1787-1790 and 1790-1793. Portland: 1990.
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Hussey, John A. "The Women of Fort Vancouver." Oregon Historical Quarterly 92 (fall 1991): 265-308.
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman. Norman: 1991.
Johnson, David Allen. Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840- 1890. Berkeley: 1992.
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Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Civil War in the American West. New York: 1991.
Kingston, Ceylon S. The Inland Empire in the Pacific Northwest: Historical Studies and Sketches. Hg. Jay W. Rea. Fairfield: 1981.
LaLande, Jeff. "Beneath the Hooded Robe: Newspapermen, Local Politics, and the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson County, Oregon, 1921-1923." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 83 (April 1992): 42-52.
Lang, William L., ed. Centennial West: Essays on the Northern Tier States. Seattle: 1991.
Laurie, Clayton D. "The United States Army and the Labor Radicals of the Coeur d'Alenes: Federal Military Intervention in the Mining Wars of 1892-1899." Idaho Yesterdays 37 (summer 1993): 12-29.
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---. Let Me Be Free: The Nez Perce Tragedy. New York: 1992.
---. The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent. New York: 1988.
Lien, Carsten. Olympic Battleground: The Power Politics of Timber Preservation. San Francisco: 1991.
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---. "Water, Arid Land, and Visions of Advancement on the Snake River Plain." Idaho Yesterdays 35 (spring 1991): 3-18.
Mark, Joan. A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians. Lincoln: 1988.
McClelland, John, Jr. "Almost Columbia, Triumphantly Washington." Columbia 2 (summer 1988): 3-11.
McConaghy, Lorraine. "Wartime Boomtown: Krikland, Washington, a Small Town during World War II." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 80 (April 1989): 42-51.
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Neal, Steve, ed. They Never Go Back to Pocatello: The Selected Essays of Richard Neuberger. Portland: 1988.
Newbill, James G. "William O. Douglas: Of a Man and His Mountains." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 79 (July 1988): 90-97.
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Nokes, J. Richard. Columbia's River: The Voyages of Robert Gray, 1787-1793. Tacoma: 1991.
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Ostler, Jeffrey. "The Origins of the Central Oregon Range War of 1904." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 79 (January 1988): 2-9.
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Palmer, Tim. The Snake River: Window to the West. Washington, D. C.: 1991.
Peterson, Jacqueline. Sacred Encounters: Father De Smet and the Indians of the Rocky Mountain West. Norman: 1993.
Phipps, Stanley S. From Bull Pen to Bargaining Table: The Tumultuous Struggle of Coeur D'Alenes Miners for the Right to Organize, 1887-1942. New York: 1988.
Pitzer, Paul C. "Dorothy McCullough Lee: The Successes and Failures of `Dottie-Do- Good.'" Oregon Historical Quarterly 91 (summer 1990): 5-42.
---. "A `Farm-in-a-Day': The Publicity Stunt and the Celebrations that Initiated the Columbia Basin Project." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 82 (January 1991): 2-7.
---. Grand Coulee: Harnessing a Dream. Pullman: 1994.
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Prucha, Francis Paul. "Two Roads to Conversion: Protestant and Catholic Missionaries in the Pacific Northwest." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 79 (October 1988): 130-137.
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Robbins, William G. "`At the End of the Cracked Whip': The Northern West, 1880-1920." Montana, the Magazine of Western History 38 (autumn 1988): 2-11.
---. Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon. Seattle: 1988.
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---. "Calculating Ouragon." Oregon Historical Quarterly 94 (summer/fall 1993): 121-140.
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---. In Mountain Shadows: A History of Idaho. Lincoln: 1991.
---. The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History. revised and enlarged edition. Lincoln [et al]: 1996. (first edition: 1989.)
---. Railroad Signatures Across the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: 1993.
Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo, and others, eds. Washington: Images of a State's Heritage. Spokane: 1988.
Seidemann, David. Showdown at Opal Creek: The Battle for America's Last Wilderness. New York: 1993.
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Soden, Dale E. "Billy Sunday in Spokane: Revivalism and Social Control." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 79 (January 1988): 10-17.
Stapilus, Randy. Paradox Politics: People and Power in Idaho. Boise: 1988.
Stratton, David H., ed. Spokane and the Inland Empire: An Interior Pacific Northwest Anthology. Pullman: 1991.
---, ed. Washington Comes of Age: The State in the National Experience. Pullman: 1992.
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Taylor, Quintard. "Blacks and Asians in a White City: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, 1890-1940." Western Historical Quarterly 22 (Novermber 1991): 401-429.
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Walth, Brent. Fire at Eden's Gate: Tom McCall and the Oregon Story. Portland: 1994.
Warnock, James. "Entrepreneurs and Progressives: Baseball in the Northwest, 1900-1901." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 82 (July 1991): 92-100.
Warren, Sydney. Farthes Frontier: The Pacific Northwest. New York: 1949.
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Webb, Robert Lloyd. On the Northwest: Commercial Whaling in the Pacific Northwest, 1790-1967. Vancouver: 1988.
Wells, Merle. "The Long Wait for Statehood." Columbia 2 (fall 1988): 18-23.
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---. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. New York: 1995.
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