The Great Columbia Plain

The Great Columbia Plain PDF Author: Donald W. Meinig
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
Dismissed in early years as a wasteland, the rolling open country that covers the interior parts of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho is today one of the richest farmlands in the nation. This work is the story of its transformation. Meinig traces all of the aspects of its development by combining geographic description with historical narrative.

The Great Columbia Plain

The Great Columbia Plain PDF Author: Donald W. Meinig
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
Dismissed in early years as a wasteland, the rolling open country that covers the interior parts of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho is today one of the richest farmlands in the nation. This work is the story of its transformation. Meinig traces all of the aspects of its development by combining geographic description with historical narrative.

˜Theœ great Columbia plain

˜Theœ great Columbia plain PDF Author: Donald W. Meinig
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description


Profiting from the Plains

Profiting from the Plains PDF Author: Claire M. Strom
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295802111
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Profiting from the Plains looks at two inextricably linked historical movements in the United States: the westward expansion of the great Northern Railway and the agricultural development of the northern plains. Claire Strom explores the persistent, idiosyncratic attempts by the Great Northern to boost agricultural production along its rail routes from St. Paul to Seattle between 1878 and 1917. Lacking a federal land grant, the Great Northern could not make money through land sales like other railways. It had to rely on haulage to make a profit, and the greatest potential for increasing haulage lay in farming. The energetic and charismatic owner of the Great Northern Railway, James J. Hill, spearheaded most of the initiatives undertaken by his corporation to boost agricultural production. He tried, often unsuccessfully, to persuade farmers of the profitability of his methods, which were largely based on his personal farming experience. When Hill�s initial efforts to increase haulage failed, he shifted his focus to working with outside agencies and institutions, often providing them with the funding to pursue projects he hoped would profit his railroad. At the time, state and federal agencies were also promoting agricultural development through irrigation, conservation, and dryland farming, but their agendas often clashed with those of the Great Northern Railway. Because Hill failed to grasp the extent to which politicians� goals differed from those of the railroad, his use of federal expertise to promote agricultural change often backfired. But despite these obstacles, the railroad magnate ironically remained among the last defenders of the small-scale farmer modeled on Jeffersonian idealism. This fascinating story of railroad politics and development ties into themes of corporate and federal sponsorship, which are increasingly recognized as fundamental to western history. As the first scholarly examination of James J. Hill�s agricultural enterprises, Profiting from the Plains makes an important contribution to the biography of the popular and controversial Hill, as well as to western and environmental history.

Landscapes of Promise

Landscapes of Promise PDF Author: William G. Robbins
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295989696
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Landscapes of Promise is the first comprehensive environmental history of the early years of a state that has long been associated with environmental protection. Covering the period from early human habitation to the end of World War II, William Robbins shows that the reality of Oregon's environmental history involves far more than a discussion of timber cutting and land-use planning. Robbins demonstrates that ecological change is not only a creation of modern industrial society. Native Americans altered their environment in a number of ways, including the planned annual burning of grasslands and light-burning of understory forest debris. Early Euro-American settlers who thought they were taming a virgin wilderness were merely imposing a new set of alterations on an already modified landscape. Beginning with the first 18th-century traders on the Pacific Coast, alterations to Oregon's landscape were closely linked to the interests of global market forces. Robbins uses period speeches and publications to document the increasing commodification of the landscape and its products. "Environment melts before the man who is in earnest," wrote one Oregon booster in 1905, reflecting prevailing ways of thinking. In an impressive synthesis of primary sources and historical analysis, Robbins traces the transformation of the Oregon landscape and the evolution of our attitudes toward the natural world.

Replenishing the Earth

Replenishing the Earth PDF Author: James Belich
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019161971X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 586

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Book Description
Why are we speaking English? Replenishing the Earth gives a new answer to that question, uncovering a 'settler revolution' that took place from the early nineteenth century that led to the explosive settlement of the American West and its forgotten twin, the British West, comprising the settler dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Between 1780 and 1930 the number of English-speakers rocketed from 12 million in 1780 to 200 million, and their wealth and power grew to match. Their secret was not racial, or cultural, or institutional superiority but a resonant intersection of historical changes, including the sudden rise of mass transfer across oceans and mountains, a revolutionary upward shift in attitudes to emigration, the emergence of a settler 'boom mentality', and a late flowering of non-industrial technologies -wind, water, wood, and work animals - especially on settler frontiers. This revolution combined with the Industrial Revolution to transform settlement into something explosive - capable of creating great cities like Chicago and Melbourne and large socio-economies in a single generation. When the great settler booms busted, as they always did, a second pattern set in. Links between the Anglo-wests and their metropolises, London and New York, actually tightened as rising tides of staple products flowed one way and ideas the other. This 're-colonization' re-integrated Greater America and Greater Britain, bulking them out to become the superpowers of their day. The 'Settler Revolution' was not exclusive to the Anglophone countries - Argentina, Siberia, and Manchuria also experienced it. But it was the Anglophone settlers who managed to integrate frontier and metropolis most successfully, and it was this that gave them the impetus and the material power to provide the world's leading super-powers for the last 200 years. This book will reshape understandings of American, British, and British dominion histories in the long 19th century. It is a story that has such crucial implications for the histories of settler societies, the homelands that spawned them, and the indigenous peoples who resisted them, that their full histories cannot be written without it.

Land Divided by Law

Land Divided by Law PDF Author: Barbara Leibhardt Wester
Publisher: Quid Pro Books
ISBN: 1610271416
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Wester's environmental history of Yakama and Euro-American cultural interactions during the 19th and early 20th century explores the role of law in both curtailing and promoting rights to subsistence resources within a market economy. Her study, using original source files, case histories, and contemporary writings, particularly describes how the struggle to assert treaty rights both sprang from and impacted the daily lives of the Yakama people. The study is now widely available in this new digital edition (and in paperback), adding a 2014 foreword by Harry Scheiber, professor of law and history at Berkeley. This book, he writes, “is a masterful study of the complex, extended series of confrontations between the native Indian cultures of the Yakima region and the regime of the conquering white nation. Her analysis is based on a blending of materials from rich archival sources and from the literatures of legal history, administrative history, anthropology, ecology, and cultural theory. Most remarkably, the book makes important new contributions to all these fields of scholarship.” "In her remarkable book Land Divided by Law, Barbara Leibhardt Wester eloquently portrays the Yakama Indians of the Columbia River Basin as actors defending a threatened, living landscape from encroachments by settlers. Using federal officials and the courts to advocate for their rights, they reasserted a spiritual heritage of the earth as body, heart, life, and breath. Anyone interested in Native peoples and their interactions with Euro-Americans will want to read this lively, engaging account." —Carolyn Merchant Professor of Environmental History, University of California, Berkeley "This is a remarkable work that brims with insight about the inter-relatedness of nature, work, law, and culture. Wester blends expertise in several different academic disciplines with a superb gift for narrative into her analysis of the Yakama people's defense of their traditional way of life. The book is a testament not only to the skill and resilience of its subjects but also to the power of the author's empathy and respect for them." —Arthur F. McEvoy Associate Dean for Research, and Paul E. Treusch Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School

Report of an Examination of the Upper Columbia River and the Territory in Its Vicinity in September and October 1881

Report of an Examination of the Upper Columbia River and the Territory in Its Vicinity in September and October 1881 PDF Author: United States. Army. Corps of Engineers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Columbia River Valley
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Upper Columbia Rivers and the Great Plain of Columbia

Upper Columbia Rivers and the Great Plain of Columbia PDF Author: Thomas Symons
Publisher: Ye Galleon Press
ISBN: 9780877700258
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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The National Forests of the Northern Region

The National Forests of the Northern Region PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest reserves
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Nature's Northwest

Nature's Northwest PDF Author: William G. Robbins
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816529590
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the greater Northwest was ablaze with change and seemingly obsessed with progress. The promotional literature of the time praising railroads, population increases, and the growing sophistication of urban living, however, ignored the reality of poverty and ethnic and gender discrimination. During the course of the next century, even with dramatic changes in the region, one constant remainedÑ inequality. With an emphasis on the regionÕs political economy, its environmental history, and its cultural and social heritage, this lively and colorful history of the Pacific NorthwestÑdefined here as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and southern British ColumbiaÑplaces the narrative of this dynamic region within a national and international context. Embracing both Canadian and American stories in looking at the larger region, renowned historian William Robbins and Katrine Barber offer us a fascinating regional history through the lens of both the environment and society. Understanding the physical landscape of the greater Pacific NorthwestÑand the watersheds of the Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath riversÑsets the stage for understanding the development of the area. Examining how this landscape spawned sawmills, fish canneries, railroads, logging camps, agriculture, and shared immigrant and ethnic traditions reveals an intricate portrait of the twentieth-century Northwest. Impressive in its synthesis of myriad historical facts, this first-rate regional history will be of interest to historians studying the region from a variety of perspectives and an informative read for anyone fascinated by the story of a landscape rich in diversity, natural resources, and Native culture.