Name: Lost Portland, Oregon
Brand: Val C. Ballestrem
SKU: 9781467139533
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Lost Portland, Oregon

9781467139533

$21.99

As Portland has grown and changed, so has its architectural landscape. Once prominent landmarks have disappeared--the Marquam Building collapsed during 1912 renovations, the massive chamber of commerce building became a parking lot and the Corbett Building became a shopping mall. The city skyline was shaped by architects like Justus F. Krumbein and David L. Williams, only to drastically change in the face of urban renewal and the desire for modernization. Discover the stories behind some of Portland's most iconic buildings, including the Beth Israel Synagogue and the first East Side High School, both lost to fire. Join historian Val C. Ballestrem as he explores the city's architectural heritage from the 1890s to the present, as well as the creative forces behind it.

Tacoma Curiosities

9781467135535

$21.99

When the Northern Pacific Railroad laid its final tracks within the fledgling hamlet of Tacoma, it brought opportunity and wild characters by the car full. Seemingly overnight, the quiet Puget Sound village transformed into a booming metropolis and eccentric playground with its fair share of growing pains. On one unlucky evening, residents awoke to the cries of a man who fell into the sewers after a road collapsed. Tacoma's first school avoided demolition for a time thanks to a band of enterprising tramps who converted the place of learning into Hotel de Gink, complete with unique minstrel show. Local author and guide Karla Stover explores these and many more stories of the quixotic and curious history of the City of Destiny.

Historic Cemeteries of Portland, Oregon

9781467148610

$24.99

Portland's historic cemeteries are some of the most beautiful and overlooked cultural treasures in the city. Full of fascinating secrets and eerie tales, these greenspaces are also the perfect spots for walking, biking and birding. Explore twenty-five burial grounds with public art in the form of remarkable tombstones that vary as much as the Portlanders they commemorate, including suffragists, spiritualists, Romani kings, politicians and murderers. From a photographer who captured the golden age of Broadway musicals to a celebrity orangutan, Portland's graves are full of surprises. Come along with cemetery sleuths Teresa Bergen and Heide Davis as they share their insights into the Rose City's remarkable past.

Haunted Salem, Oregon

9781467138130

$21.99

Salem's haunted tales date back to the 1830s, when indigenous tribes, trappers and homesteaders shared the lush Willamette Valley. Murders, hangings and dark underground passageways defined the city's early days as the Willamette River moved old stern-wheelers up to the city's docks. Today, the sounds of those phantom vessels can be heard plying along the river late at night. Oregon's capital city has long been the site of mental hospitals, prisons and other notorious institutions, famously depicted in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The residual effects of decades of torture and depravity cling to the old facilities in both sight and sound. Author Tim King examines many of these chilling encounters along with eyewitness accounts of spirits that refuse to be quiet.

True Tales of Puget Sound

9781467139694

$24.99

From the shores of Gig Harbor to the slopes of Mount Rainier, the towns surrounding Puget Sound all have incredible stories to share. How did Old Fort Nisqually, now perched on a lofty bluff above Tacoma, move twenty-two miles from its original 1843 site in DuPont? Did Eatonville's copper-infused paint inspire the phrase "painting the town red"? Read about the famed Pie Goddess of Enumclaw and about a cookbook compiled by Emma Smith DeVoe of Parkland that included helpful tips from suffragettes. Join author Dorothy Wilhelm, of the television show My Home Town, as she explores these beloved town tales and uncovers the rest of the story.

Lost Oregon Streetcars

9781467136853

$21.99

The streetcars that plied Oregon's small-town streets were every bit as diverse as those in Portland and their history even more fascinating. Learn of the devastating 1922 fire that scorched Astoria's plank road railways and put a halt to its once-thriving streetcar network. Muse over the tale of a beloved white horse named Old Charlie that proved more efficient at powering Albany's streetcars than the alternative steam locomotive. Laugh at the spectacle of university students being carted back to their dormitories on the Eleventh Street Line's special midnight "drunk express" trains. Take pride in the tiny town of Cherry Grove, which became the first in the West to embrace new battery technology. Local historian Richard Thompson celebrates the lost trolley lines that transported Oregon's people across the state for decades.

Portland's Lost Waterfront

9781609495954

$21.99

Today, Portland, Oregon, is a city of majestic bridges crisscrossing the deep swath of the Willamette River. A century ago, riverboat pilots would have witnessed a flurry of stevedores and longshoremen hurrying along the wharves. Situated as the terminus of sea lanes and railroads, with easy access to the wheat fields, sawmills and dairies of the Willamette Valley, Portland quickly became a rich and powerful seaport. As the city changed, so too did the role of the sailor--once bartered by shanghai masters, later elevated to well-paid and respected mariner. Drawing on primary source material, previously unpublished photographs and thirty-three years of waterfront work, local author Barney Blalock recalls the city's vanished waterfront in these tales of sea dogs, salty days and the river's tides.

Tacoma Illustrated

9780738594880

$21.99

The work herewith presented needs little introduction to the citizens of Tacoma, but to the public at large, whose hands it is destined to reach, some explanation may not be out of place. The object of the publication is the embodiment, in concise and correct form, of the rise and progress of a city whose growth in population, trade, manufactures, and whose surrounding resources are almost without parallel. The resources of the State of Washington are first given a space in our columns; then a cursory history of Tacoma and her important interests, followed by full descriptions of these interests, and concluding with histories of her leading business houses. The familiar features of some of our prominent and enterprising citizens will also be recognized in its pages; many others are equally deserving a place in our limited gallery, but further space could not be afforded.

A Brief History of Vashon Island

9781626191693

$24.99

Reachable only by ferry, Vashon Island is a breathtaking rural retreat from the bustling activity of nearby Seattle and Tacoma. The island's first inhabitants, the sx̌ʷəbab", took advantage of its evergreen forests and rich marine resources. In 1792, George Vancouver was the first Anglo to discover the island and named it after Captain James Vashon. By the late 1800s, the first white settlers had established farms and greenhouses that supplied nearby cities with berries, tomatoes and cucumbers. Ferries drove development in the later half of the century, introducing new industries and tourism to the area. While both influenced by and isolated from the mainland, the island developed its own unique character treasured by locals. Merging human and natural history, author Bruce Haulman presents the rich heritage of this thriving community.

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland:

9781467119535

$21.99

The 1917 election of Mayor George Luis Baker ushered a long era of unscrupulous greed into Portland government. While supposedly enforcing prohibition laws, Baker ordered police chief Leon Jenkins to control and profit from the bootlegging market. Baker filled city coffers and his friends' pockets with booze-soaked cash while sensational headlines like the 1929 affair between policeman Bill Breuning and informant Anna Schrader scandalized the city. Maligned in the press, Schrader executed a bitter campaign to recall the mayor. In 1933, a hired gunman murdered special investigator to the governor Frank Aiken a day before he would have filed a report on corruption in the city government. Authors JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin Kennedy unearth the salacious details of Baker's crooked administration in a revelatory account of prohibition in the Rose City.

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland:

Oregon Wildland Firefighting

9781467138505

$21.99

Over the past century, some of the world’s largest wildland fires have occurred in Oregon. Accidentally set by a disgruntled cook on an English ship, the Great Fire of 1845 displaced multiple tribes and boiled wildlife alive in the Columbia River. The Tillamook Burn started up every 6 years from 1933 to 1951 and incited one of the largest reseeding efforts in the world with 72 million seedlings planted. The Long Draw Fire of 2012, the state’s largest in more than 150 years, started as a small spark and raged into an ocean of flames thousands of acres wide in a matter of hours. Veteran wildland firefighter Sean Davis shares harrowing firsthand accounts that illustrate what it takes to battle an inferno.

Cover image for Oregon Wildland Firefighting, isbn: 9781467138505

The Everett Massacre

9780738594583

$21.99

Sunday, November 5, 1916 marked the bloodiest battle in Pacific Northwest labor history. On that day, about 300 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (the I.W.W.) boarded the steamers Verona and Calista from Seattle and headed north toward Port Gardner Bay. The I.W.W. (or Wobblies) planned a public demonstration in Everett that afternoon, to be held on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore, a spot commonly used by street speakers. Hoping to gain converts to their dream of One Big Union, the Wobblies began street speaking in Everett during a local shingle weavers' strike, encountering brutal suppression by local law officers. Free speech soon became the dominant issue. The number of demonstrators and the violence of the response from law enforcement grew as the weeks wore on. On November 5th, word reached Everett that a group of armed anarchists was coming to burn their town. 200 citizen deputies, under the authority of Snohomish County Sheriff Donald McRae, met to repel the invaders. The Verona arrived first, pulling in alongside the dock. McRae asked "Who is your leader?" When he was told "We are all leaders!", he informed passengers they could not land. A single shot was fired, followed by minutes of chaotic shooting. Whether the first shot came from boat or dock was never determined. Passengers aboard the Verona rushed to the opposite side of the ship, nearly capsizing the vessel. Bullets pierced the pilot house, and the Verona's captain struggled to back it out of port. The Calista returned to Seattle, without trying to land.

Tacoma New Herald Annual

9780738594897

$21.99

"Dear Sir--I have found the place that can become the Greatest City of the World. Hold on there! Laugh if you will after you have read this. The biggest folly is to fool yourself. The best authorities agree that as to climatic conditions, life-supporting soil and wealth-producing lands and waters, the Pacific Ocean and lands on each shore half way across the Continent to the Atlantic are more than twice as great and good as those in, and on, the Atlantic half-way across to the Pacific. . . . No part of America is more blessed by grand watersheds than the North Pacific Coast, and no city gets greater benefit from them than Tacoma. This State of Washington, with the beauty of Switzerland and the fertility of ancient Egypt, with its vast and varied resources, with its rich irrigable eastern half and its western half enjoying a semi-tropical climate, owing to the Japan current, will, when the world's population becomes adjusted, support twenty times its present population in comfort; and, if it had thirty times its present population, it would be more self-sustaining than the original thirteen American States are now. This will be conceded when the life-supporting resources of, and external items that contribute to, the respective districts are weighed and balanced. . . ." Donald Fletcher, Nov. 1, 1906

Lake Oswego Vignettes

9781609495534

$21.99

With tales of a mayor who knew the town's cows by name and a singing pig drunk on moonshine, Marylou Colver captures the quirky anecdotes of Lake Oswego's past. In the twentieth century, visionary real estate developers touted Oregon's Lake Oswego as an ideal place to "live where you play," a reputation the city maintains today. But this playful paradise is a far cry from the small town developed by iron company entrepreneurs in the nineteenth century. Colver, founder of the Lake Oswego Preservation Society, chronicles the transition from gritty to pretty by recounting the people and events that shaped Lake Oswego. From bathing suit bans to a robot circus, enjoy the legacy of unusual facts, some recently discovered, that inspired Lake Oswego Vignettes.

Portland in the 1960s

9781609494711

$21.99

In 1968, Newsweek reported an imminent threat of twenty thousand hippies descending on Portland, Oregon. Although the numbers were exaggerated, Portland did boast a vibrant 1960s culture of disenchanted and disenfranchised individuals seeking social and political revolution. Barefoot and bell-bottomed, they hung out in Portland's bohemian underground and devised a better world. What began in coffee shop conversations found its voice in the Willamette Bridge newspaper, KBOO radio station and the Portland State University student strike, resulting in social, artistic and political change in the Rose City. Through these stories from the counterculture, author Polina Olsen brings to life the beat-snapping Caffe Espresso, the incense and black light posters of the Psychedelic Supermarket and the spontaneous concerts and communal soups in Lair Park.

Hidden History of Tacoma

9781609494704

$21.99

The City of Destiny took shape where rails met sails on the shores of Commencement Bay. When Tacoma was chosen as the Northern Pacific Railroad's terminus, the city rose from the mudflats and took the lead as the Northwest's destination for opportunity. In this collection, discover the city's early notables and uncover the stories behind the historic landmarks. Why did city planners abandon Olmsted's vision? How many war bonds did Lana Turner's kisses buy? Why were vegetarians warned, "Don't drink the water"? Who is the tiny figure with coal black hair and bound feet who haunts Old Tacoma? Local author and guide Karla Stover answers these questions and more as she spins stories from the tomes of Tacoma's past.

Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass

9781467137744

$24.99

Relive the exciting early days of skiing when Snoqualmie Pass was the epicenter of the sport. Ski jumping tournaments attracted world-class competitors to Cle Elum, Beaver Lake on the Summit and the Milwaukee Ski Bowl. The Mountaineers' twenty-mile race from Snoqualmie to Stampede Pass, dubbed "the world's longest and hardest race," was a pinnacle of cross-country skiing. Alpine skiing began in private ski clubs and expanded in 1934 with the country's first municipal ski area, known as the Seattle Municipal Ski Park. And the sport peaked when the Milwaukee Ski Bowl at Hyak opened in 1938. With train access, a modern ski lodge, an overhead cable lift and free ski lessons from the Seattle Times, the Ski Bowl revolutionized local skiing. Lawyer and local ski historian John W. Lundin follows the historic tracks through the genesis of American skiing.

Hidden History of Portland, Oregon

9781626191983

$21.99

In this engaging narrative, author JD Chandler crafts a people's history of Portland, Oregon, sharing the lesser-known stories of individuals who stood against the tide and fought for liberty and representation: C.E.S. Wood, who documented the conflict between Native Americans and the United States Army; Beatrice Morrow Cannady, founding member of the Portland NAACP and first African American woman to practice law in Oregon; women's rights advocate Dr. Marie Equi, who performed abortions and was an open lesbian; and student athlete Jack Yoshihara, who, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, was barred from participating in the 1942 Rose Bowl. From scandal and oppression to injustice and the brink of revolution, join Chandler as he gives voice to the Rose City's quiet radicals and outspoken activists.

Extraordinary Women Conservationists of Washington

9781626197596

$21.99

Courageous women are to thank for many of Washington's environmental conservation successes. Bonnie Phillips, Melanie Rowland and Helen Engle battled harmful timber cutting. Polly Dyer and Emily Haig worked to expand Olympic National Park and organized efforts to establish North Cascades National Park. Women helped create the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters. As a state representative, Jolene Unsoeld led the fight against Boeing and other major corporations to pass the state Model Toxics Control Act. Author and Washington conservationist Dee Arntz recounts these important stories and many others, showing that the legacy of Washington's female conservationists is nothing short of extraordinary.

Extraordinary Women Conservationists of Washington

Building the Columbia River Highway

9781626192713

$21.99

When nine-hundred-foot ice age floods carved the Columbia River Gorge through the Cascade Mountains to the sea, little space was left for man to form a highway of his own. It took an artist-poet-engineer extraordinaire to conquer this reluctant piece of real estate and produce the nation's first scenic highway. Meet Sam Hill, the mover and shaker, and Samuel Lancaster, the polio survivor, who turned modern engineering on its ear to create a "poem in stone." Today, Oregon's historic Columbia River Highway is hidden among the trees, where it meanders past spectacular waterfalls and dramatic views. Ride along with Peg Willis as she explores the beginnings of this miracle highway and the men who created it.

Seattle and the Orient

9780738594835

$21.99

By way of introduction the writer desires to state that Seattle and the Orient is published to act as an opening wedge into a country up to this time very little known to people residing upon Puget Sound. It is for the purpose of introducing ourselves to the people doing business in Siberia, China, Japan, the China Archipelago, the Philippines and Hawaii, and to eventually open a way by which closer trade relations may be promoted, that this book has been published. The subjects treated are in no instance overdrawn, but are secured by direct contact with the people interested, and are plain matter of fact statements of affairs as they exist in Seattle and in Western Washington. The illustrations shown are the best procurable, and will afford the reader a fair idea of what can be found in the metropolis of America's great Mediterranean. Such a showing as the following pages make cannot help but impress even the most casual observer that Seattle has a future before it of very great magnitude. Unquestionably it is destined to become the largest city upon the Pacific Coast. It has every material advantage to make it so; it has almost every imaginable resource upon which to draw for support; it is the center of one of the greatest lumbering sections in the world; it 'has inexhaustible coal mines; it is the central point from which the gold fields of Alaska and the British Northwest Territory are reached; it is practically the center of all the mineral wealth of the Northwest; and it is moreover the natural geographical entrepot for the great Oriental markets, a fact which in time will make it the greatest shipping port in the United States. An attempt has been made to enumerate its varied resources in succeeding pages, and a story has been told which will prove both interesting and instructive. It has been the aim of the writer to take up the industrial side of Seattle and portray a condition as near the actual as possible.