Those Wild Northwest Days: Twenty-five Offbeat Stories About the Pacific Northwest's Pioneers and the Towns They Inhabited

by Cheryl Landes

Those Wild Northwest Days is a lively collection of 25 true stories about the pioneers who settled the Pacific Northwest and the towns where they lived from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Among the characters you'll Lyman Cutler, whose disagreement with a pig almost caused an international incident. Elijah Elliott, who led a wagon train onto a new shortcut from the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley and became lost in Oregon's high desert country. Fern Hobbs, the personal secretary of former Oregon Governor Oswald West, who shut down a rowdy mining town on the banks of the Snake River. Noah Kellogg, a down-on-his-luck, jack-of-all trades whose misadventures with a stubborn mule led to the discovery of one of the richest silver lodes in the Idaho Panhandle. Asa Mercer, who played matchmaker for the lonely male settlers in Washington Territory by recruiting "brides" from the northeastern United States.Author Cheryl Landes became interested in Pacific Northwest history and historical travel during her studies at Eastern Oregon State College (now Eastern Oregon University) in La Grande, Oregon. She has a bachelor's degree in general studies, with minors in history and psychology, from Eastern, and in journalisn from the University of Oregon in Eugene. She has published two travel books, Beautiful America's Seattle, and Beautiful America's Idaho, and more than 100 travel articles. Her articles have appeared in a variety of magazines throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Sunset, Northwest Travel, Oregon Coast, Adventure West, Parks and Recreation, Rock and Gem, Old West, Gold Prospector, Cat Fancy, and Postcard Collector.

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 22, 2007

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, well researched, these accounts of happenings in small towns of Oregon and Washington is a good read, capturing the flavor of some pretty wild goings-on. Many of those towns no longer exist, but the author has visited every site that she writes about, and brings the reader up to date. Includes a few places I've been: Shaniko, Prineville (the story she tells here explains a lot), Hot Lake in Oregon, Seattle, Washington and Victoria, B.C.