Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: History

  • Edgefield History

    This is just a little bit of history and trivia that popped into my head tonight, about McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon (just outside of Portland). The Edgefield is a 38-acre estate that features lodging, restaurants, a brewery, a vineyard and winery, a distillery, and more, dominated by a Georgian-revival style manor. It’s a fantastic, fun place, as all of the big McMenamins renovations are.

    Built in 1911, it was originally the Multnomah County Poor Farm:

    Residents operated a self-sufficient environment, raising hogs, poultry, growing a variety of fruits and vegetables, operating a dairy, cannery and meat packing plant as well as working in the laundry, kitchen and hospital.

    At that time, not long after the turn of the last century, my great-grandfather was a mortician in Portland, and on occasion he would have to make a trip out to the Poor Farm to pick up the bodies of residents who died.

    Yeah, an odd bit of trivia. It’s been an odd week.

  • Frontier Doctor

    Frontier Doctor: Observations on Central Oregon and the Changing WestI was browsing at Barnes and Nobles this evening and found a book that looks very interesting (so I bought it): Frontier Doctor: Observations on Central Oregon and the Changing West. It’s the autobiographical account of a doctor during the formative years of Bend.

    Urling Coe came to the new town of Bend, Oregon, in 1905, a young medical student graduate seeking adventure and opportunity in the West. Frontier Doctor, Coe’s autobiographical account of his thirteen-year residency, details the extraordinary experiences of a young physician in frontier Oregon and offers a vivid social history of town and ranch life on the Oregon high desert.

    Cool! Looks very much like a fun and interesting read.

  • The Donner Party

    The January issue of Discover Magazine lists the top 100 science stories of 2003 (according to them, of course), and coming in at number 96 is the story of the Donner Party cannibalism site unearthed (scroll down the page for their summary).

    In case you haven’t heard of the Donner Party, here’s a capsule review: in 1846 a group of pioneers on their way to California were trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains by a blizzard. They had a limited food supply that ran out quickly, and survivors were forced to eat the bodies of the dead to survive. Gruesome stuff.

    Anyway, Discover’s recap of the story—that archaeologists unearthed what they believe to be the Donner Party camp—spins it so that the Donner Party tragedy was a “legend has it” type of event—i.e., doubtful that it occurred. Say what?

    This bothered me, so I went to the source: The book Weird History 101 (great book, I highly recommend it) contains several contemporary accounts of the Donner Party from the people who survived: Virginia Reed, daughter of one of the Party leaders; Lewis Keseberg, one of those forced to eat the dead to survive; and Edwin Bryant, not a member of the Party (I don’t think) but who visited the camp in the spring.

    “Legend has it,” indeed. I can understand the importance of scientific investigations of an historic event, but playing off a well-documented incident as questionable as to whether it even occurred just seems awfully sloppy, and a bit irresponsible.

  • The Story of America

    Does this seem counterintuitive? I’m currently reading The Story of America, by Hendrik van Loon, published in 1927. First edition, too, I think. Why? Because I wanted to get a perspective on American history from nearly 80 years ago. This was a time when the booming Roaring Twenties were in full swing, before the Great Depression and World War II, when there was only one “Great War” and there were still people alive that had lived through the Civil War.

    This wasn’t a planned excursion, mind you; I’d had this book on my shelf for quite awhile (I probably picked it up at a garage sale or a thrift store for cheap) and picked it up when I was looking for something to read.

    On the whole, though, it’s an interesting and engaging read. Being written in 1927, it’s still under copyright for a few more years, but I’ve noticed that Hendrik van Loon’s earlier book The Story of Mankind (1921) is available on Gutenberg. Perhaps I’ll convert it to a Palm ebook.