Astoria

Astoria PDF Author: Peter Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006221831X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeletons in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing. Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition. Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

Astoria and Empire

Astoria and Empire PDF Author: James P. Ronda
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803289420
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In late December 1788 a worried Spanish official in Mexico City set down his fears about a new and aggressive northern neighbor. Viceroy Manuel Antonio Florez offered a gloomy prediction about the future of Spanish-United States relations in the West. He already knew about the steady march of frontiersmen toward St. Louis and now came troubling word of Robert Gray's ship Columbia on the Northwest coast. All this seemed to fit a pattern, a design for Yankee expansion. "We ought not to be surprised," warned the viceroy, "that the English colonies of America, now being an independent Republic, should carry out the design of finding a safe port on the Pacific and of attempting to sustain it by crossing the immense country of the continent above our possessions of Texas, New Mexico, and California." Canadian fur merchants and Russian bureaucrats also viewed the young republic as a potential rival in the struggle for western dominion. The viceroy's vision of the future proved startlingly accurate. Within the next two decades an American president would authorize a federally funded expedition to find just the sort of transcontinental route Florez imagined. Equally important, a New York entrepreneur would propose and put into motion an ambitious plan to make the Northwest an American political and commercial empire. John Astor's Pacific Fur Company, with Astoria as its central post on the Columbia River, was Florez's nightmare come true. Astoria had long represented either a daring overland adventure or simply a failed trading venture. The Astorians surely had their share of adventure. And the Pacific Fur Company never brought its founder the profits he expected. But all those involved in the extensive enterprise knew it meant more. Thomas Jefferson once described Astoria as the "germ of a great, free and independent empire," believing that the entire American claim to the lands west of the Rockies rested on "Astor's settlement at the mouth of the Columbia." And John Quincy Adams, the expansionist-minded secretary of state, labeled then entire Northwest as "the empire of Astoria." This book seeks to explore Astoria as part of a large and complex struggle for national sovereignty in the Northwest. The Astorians and their rivals were always engaged in more than trading and trapping. They were advance agents of empire. -- from Preface

Astoria

Astoria PDF Author: Peter Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006221831X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeletons in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing. Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition. Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

Astoria

Astoria PDF Author: Washington Irving
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Astoria (Or.)
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The first English edition was issued simultaneously with the American. John Jacob Astor persuaded Irving to undertake this story of his ill-fated enterprise at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1834. Irving had the use of all of Astor's notes and manuscripts, as well as the original journals of such key participants as Robert Stuart, Wilson Price Hunt, and Ramsey Crooks. The resulting work is a classic - an indispensable resource for students of the American West. It is considered to be the "classic account of the first American attempt at settlement on the Pacific coast,1811--initial action towards substantiating our claim to Oregon--including the earliest extended relation of Wilson P. Hunt's overland expedition from St. Louis to that settlement." Howes.

Colony and Empire

Colony and Empire PDF Author: William G. Robbins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
"A forceful analysis of the role of capitalism in the history of the American West. This is an important contribution to the new western history that should be read by both historians and residents of the American West". -- Journal of American History. "This exciting book should take its place on the shelf next to Patricia Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest". -- Forest & Conservation History.

John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor PDF Author: Axel Madsen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471009350
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
On The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors: "A well-written biography."-New York Times On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck: "Madsen's admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control."-Christian Science Monitor On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own: "Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel's life."-New York Times Book Review "Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel's complicated existence. It's not an easy task."-Toronto Globe and Mail On Gloria and Joe: "Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers."-Dallas Morning News On Cousteau: "Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge."-Chicago Tribune On Malraux: "Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print."-Kansas City Star

The Empire State Building

The Empire State Building PDF Author: Ronald A. Reis
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438119372
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
It was to be a structure like no other: the largest and tallest skyscraper in the world. Initial plans for the Empire State Building called for an Art Deco masterwork to rise 1,000 feet, with 80 stories of rental space. The high-rise was to completely fill the 84,000-square-foot site of the former Waldorf-Astoria, then New Yorks most opulent hotel. Hopes were high that the Empire State Building would accelerate Midtown Manhattans stride toward commercial prominence, pulling more business uptown. Built in the early years of the Great Depression, during which one out of four New Yorkers was out of work, the Empire State Buildings construction was thought by many to be a foolish undertaking. Yet, it was completed under budget and ahead of schedule, and the commercial colossus has stood through good times and bad as a symbol of daring, beauty, and American invention.

Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon Or Columbia River, 1810-1813

Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon Or Columbia River, 1810-1813 PDF Author: Alexander Ross
Publisher: Westphalia Press
ISBN: 9781633916746
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Soon after information from Lewis and Clark's expedition to chart the western region of the United States was shared, investors and explorers sought ways to capitalize on the information. In this work, Alexander Ross details the trials and tribulations of one such expedition, now known as the Astor Expedition. Ross was employed by John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, and this led to the founding Fort Astoria, an American outpost near the Columbia River. Although the title suggests that members of Astoria were "the first settlers" of the region, it fails to consider the numerous indigenous tribes Ross encountered and described in great detail. For example, this work includes an appendix of Chinook vocabulary, highlighting how extensive and advanced the indigenous populations were that had already settled in that region. The fort itself was populated by a variety of people, including French-Canadians, Scots, Hawaiians, Americans, and a variety of indigenous North American peoples, such as Iroquois. Due to the War of 1812, the fort was bought out by the North West Company, which renamed it Fort George.

Astoria and Empire

Astoria and Empire PDF Author: James P. Ronda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Astoria (Or.)
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Book Description


Trading Beyond the Mountains

Trading Beyond the Mountains PDF Author: Richard S. Mackie
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774842466
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the North West and Hudson�s Bay companies extended their operations beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. There they encountered a mild and forgiving climate and abundant natural resources and, with the aid of Native traders, branched out into farming, fishing, logging, and mining. Following its merger with the North West Company in 1821, the Hudson�s Bay Company set up its headquarters at Fort Vancouver on the lower Columbia River. From there, the company dominated much of the non-Native economy, sending out goods to markets in Hawaii, Sitka, and San Francisco. Trading Beyond the Mountains looks at the years of exploration between 1793 and 1843 leading to the commercial development of the Pacific coast and the Cordilleran interior of western North America. Mackie examines the first stages of economic diversification in this fur trade region and its transformation into a dynamic and distinctive regional economy. He also documents the Hudson�s Bay Company�s employment of Native slaves and labourers in the North West coast region.

Collected papers

Collected papers PDF Author: Hubert Gregory Schenck
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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Book Description