Oregon's landscape boasts brilliant waterfalls, towering volcanoes, productive river valleys, and far-reaching high deserts. People have lived in the region for at least twelve thousand years, during which they established communities; named places; harvested fish, timber, and agricultural products; and made laws and choices that both protected and threatened the land and its inhabitants. William G. Robbins traces the state's history of commodification and conservation, despair and hope, progress and tradition. This revised and updated edition features a new introduction and epilogue with discussion of climate change, racial disparity, immigration, and discrimination. Revealing Oregon's rich social, economic, cultural, and ecological complexities, Robbins upholds the historian's commitment to critical inquiry, approaching the state's past with both open-mindedness and a healthy dose of skepticism about the claims of Oregon's boosters.

Blessed with vast expanses of virgin timber, a good harbor, and a San Francisco market for its lumber, the Coos Bay area once dubbed itself "a poor man's paradise." A new Prologue and Epilogue by the author bring this story of gyppo loggers, longshoremen, millwrights, and whistle punks into the twenty-first century, describing Coos Bay's transition from timber town to a retirement and tourist community, where the site of a former Weyerhaeuser complex is now home to the Coquille Indian Tribe's The Mill Casino.

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.

Oregon's landscape boasts brilliant waterfalls, towering volcanoes, productive river valleys, and far-reaching high deserts. People have lived in the region for at least twelve thousand years, during which they established communities; named places; harvested fish, timber, and agricultural products; and made laws and choices that both protected and threatened the land and its inhabitants. William G. Robbins traces the state's history of commodification and conservation, despair and hope, progress and tradition. This revised and updated edition features a new introduction and epilogue with discussion of climate change, racial disparity, immigration, and discrimination. Revealing Oregon's rich social, economic, cultural, and ecological complexities, Robbins upholds the historian's commitment to critical inquiry, approaching the state's past with both open-mindedness and a healthy dose of skepticism about the claims of Oregon's boosters.

Popular writers and historians alike have perpetuated the powerful myth of the rugged-individualist single-handedly transforming the American West. In reality, William Robbins counters, it was the Guggenheims and Goulds, the Harrimans and Hearsts, and the Morgans and Mellons who masterminded what the West was to become. Remove the romance, he shows, and a darker West emerges--a colonial-like region where "industrial statesmen," aided by eastern U.S. and European capital, manipulated investments in pursuit of private gain while controlling wage-earning cowboys and miners.

Robbins argues that understanding the impact of capitalism on the West--from the fur trade era to the present--is essential to understanding power, influence, and change in the region.

Showing how global capitalism had a more profound impact on the modern West than individual initiative, he explores violence and racism along the Texas/Mexican border; colonial-style company towns in Montana and the Northwest; contrasting traditions astride the U.S./Canadian boundary; pace-setting agribusiness and exploitation of labor in California; the growing power of metropolitan centers and dependence of rural areas; and the emergence of a sizable federal influence.

To grasp the essence of the West's dramatic transformation, Robbins contends, you must look to the mainstays of material relations in the region--the perpetually changing character of political and economic culture; the inherent instability of resources; and the larger constellations of capitalist decision making. Consequently, he shows shy Western success and failure, prosperity and misfortune, and expansion and decline were all inseparably linked to the evolution of capitalism at the local, regional, national and global levels.

In the tradition of Patricia Nelson Limerick's "Legacy of Conquest," Robbins's study challenges some of our most revered images of the West and invigorates the ongoing debates over its history and meaning for our nation.

For years the logging industry and the rich timberlands of the East and West coasts have evoked images of Jigger Jones and Paul Bunyan, lusty lumbermen of folk history. Behind these myths, however, lie the realities of ruthless competition, heedless exploitation of forestlands, and massive overproduction that once threatened to destroy the lumber industry.
William G. Robbins reveals a sharply revisionist view of the lumber industry in the first half of the twentieth century, a period of drastic growth and change. He offers a unique national perspective on the dominant figures in logging--the large-scale plant, mill, and timberland owners whose decisions were shaped by profit seeking. It is a story of unbalanced production, economic gains and losses, the slow maturation of industrial capitalism, and the alarming toll in social and human costs. Modernizers in the industry developed trade associations as a means of controlling the widespread disorder. But these associations, dependent of voluntary and cooperative efforts, were relatively ineffective in the early years of the twentieth century. The fortunes of the lumber industry continued to fluctuate wildly until the Second World War, when lumbermen gained much of the legislative support they had sought so long from the federal government.
This account will especially appeal to students of lumber and forest history as well as to historians, political scientists, and economists seeking a new approach to American political economy.

Post-World War II Oregon was a place of optimism and growth, a spectacular natural region from ocean to high desert that seemingly provided opportunity in abundance. With the passing of time, however, Oregon's citizens - rural and urban - would find themselves entangled in issues that they had little experience in resolving. The same trees that provided income to timber corporations, small mill owners, loggers, and many small towns in Oregon, also provided a dramatic landscape and a home to creatures at risk. The rivers whose harnessing created power for industries that helped sustain Oregon's growth - and were dumping grounds for municipal and industrial wastes - also provided passageways to spawning grounds for fish, domestic water sources, and recreational space for everyday Oregonians. The story of Oregon's accommodation to these divergent interests is a divisive story between those interested in economic growth and perceived stability and citizens concerned with exercising good stewardship towards the state's natural resources and preserving the state's livability. In his second volume of Oregon's environmental history, William Robbins addresses efforts by individuals and groups within and outside the state to resolve these conflicts. Among the people who have had roles in this process, journalists and politicians Richard Neuberger and Tom McCall left substantial legacies and demonstrated the ambiguities inherent in the issues they confronted.

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.

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 remained-- inequality.
With an emphasis on the region's political economy, its environmental history, and its cultural and social heritage, this lively and colorful history of the Pacific Northwest--defined here as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and southern British Columbia--places 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 Northwest--and the watersheds of the Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath rivers--sets 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.