Historic Photos of Oregon
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About this ebook
Known for its natural beauty, Oregon has a unique and remarkable history. During the sixteenth century, European explorers sighted the Oregon coast and wrote about it. The region would be opened to settlement through the Hudson’s Bay Company and later as a result of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805. By 1859, the Oregon Territory was set to join the Union as the 33rd state.
Over the next two centuries, the opening of navigable rivers and bays to steamships, the arrival of the railroads, and in the twentieth century the advent of roads and highways helped cities like Portland, Eugene, Salem, and Medford, as well as the state’s smaller communities, grow and prosper. The pioneers and settlers who came to the region worked at logging, lumber milling, fishing, farming and ranching, mining, and salmon canning.
Nearly 200 images, all published in vivid black-and-white with captions and introductions, make Historic Photos of Oregon a compelling look at the history of this intriguing and picturesque state.
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Reviews for Historic Photos of Oregon
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Many of the photographs were wonderful, most notably the images by Dorothea Lange & Edward Curtis, but I'd already seen most of them in other books. Some of the photos were just plain out of focus and shouldn't have been included. I didn't like the lack of information (many photos were captioned vaguely- "a street in Portland") but I enjoyed the pictures. The text was pretty ordinary.
Book preview
Historic Photos of Oregon - William Stack
HISTORIC PHOTOS OF
OREGON
TEXT AND CAPTIONS BY WILLIAM C. STACK
A panorama of Portland showing the city as it appeared around 1923, with Mount Hood in the distance. By the 1920s, most urban Oregonians had electricity in their homes. In contrast, two-thirds of rural Oregonians still did not have electricity by 1930.
HISTORIC PHOTOS OF
OREGON
Turner Publishing Company
200 4th Avenue North • Suite 950
Nashville, Tennessee 37219
(615) 255-2665
www.turnerpublishing.com
Historic Photos of Oregon
Copyright © 2010 Turner Publishing Company
All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009933007
ISBN: 978-1-59652-556-6
Printed in China
10 11 12 13 14 15 16—0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
EARLY INHABITANTS AND NEWCOMERS (1860–1899)
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES (1900–1919)
BETWEEN THE WARS (1920–1940)
THE WAR YEARS (1941–1945)
VIGNETTES OF MODERN TIMES (1946–1971)
NOTES ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS
A Junior Chamber of Commerce streetcar advertises Fire Prevention Week in Portland.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume, Historic Photographs of Oregon, is the result of the cooperation and efforts of many individuals and organizations. It is with great thanks that we acknowledge the valuable contribution of the following for their generous support:
Library of Congress
University of Oregon Library
The writer would also like to thank these individuals for their assistance in making this book possible:
Mary A. Lindsley
Rebecca V. Shoemaker
Madeleine J. Stack
PREFACE
The state of Oregon presents a compelling story, and the effort to tell that story in 200 photographs and captions poses a challenging task. This pictorial history of Oregon is an attempt to present the main political, cultural, and economic themes in the state from the 1860s to the 1970s, chronicling the efforts of individuals, both well known and obscure, who have made Oregon what it is today. Early on, the region was home to the Nez Perce, Kalapuya, Umpqua, Klamath, and Chinook. After settlers arrived, Oregon became known for its economic opportunities, most notably in farming, mining, fishing, canning, ranching, and logging. Oregon achieved statehood in 1859, and from that year forward, the history of the state was marked by the coming of the railroads, an abundance of natural resources, Bonneville Dam, entrepreneurs, immigrants, labor difficulties, and a panoply of fascinating characters and events that together would begin to shape its colorful portrait as one of today’s fifty states in the union.
The nearly 200 images presented here include several photographs by two of America’s most famous photographers, Edward S. Curtis and Dorothea Lange. Curtis’s photographs of the Chinook, Klamath, Umatilla, and Cayuse tribes in southern and eastern Oregon illustrate their dress and lifestyle with the haunting images of Crater Lake, the forest, and Klamath Basin and give a keen view of the area. Dorothea Lange’s images of southern and eastern Oregon during the Great Depression give the viewer a glimpse of the hardscrabble lives and poor living conditions common among Americans living through the era. Lange’s photographs also convey a brighter side to the era, depicting the daily lives of average rural and urban Americans in a way that shows their inner strength, pride, and joy.
The photographs in this book are organized into five chronological eras. The first section covers the period from the 1860s to 1899. Encounters between early Americans and the settlers moving into their ancestral lands are chronicled in these images. The second section spans the period from 1900 to 1919 and focuses on the development of river, railroad, fishing, timber, and agricultural commerce, which helped Oregon’s population to expand in the twentieth century. During this era, Oregon was attempting to deliver a message of its importance to the rest of the United States. The third section concentrates on the period between the world wars, from 1920 to 1940. New rail transportation, New Deal building projects, and highways are shown as the state pursued growth during the twentieth century. The fourth section focuses on the World War II era, from 1941 to 1945. This section shows the growth of the Pacific Northwest and its connections to the popular culture of the western United States of that day. Oregon retained its rural flavor through such events as Fourth of July parades