May 2020
ISBN 9780870719929 (paperback)
6 x 9, 240 pages. 20 b&w photographs. 1 map. Notes. Bilbiography. Index.
American West
History & Biography
Oregon

Struggle on the North Santiam

Power and Community on the Margins of the American West
Bob H. Reinhardt
Summary

A sixty-mile forested corridor stretching from the Willamette Valley to the Cascade mountains, Oregon’s North Santiam Canyon is like many other marginalized places in the American West. Its residents have long sought to exercise their limited power in the face of real and exaggerated external forces: global economic systems, cultural power emanating from larger cities, and state and national political forces. Struggle on the North Santiam examines how these Oregonians have responded to, interacted with, and sometimes gotten the better of such external forces.

In this deeply researched account, historian Bob H. Reinhardt connects the North Santiam Canyon’s history to that of the Pacific Northwest and, more broadly, the United States. Reinhardt details events that illuminate themes in the region’s history: railroad development as seen through the failed dreams of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, federal land scams in the Oregon land fraud trials of the early twentieth century, the causes and consequences of mid-century river development projects like Detroit Dam, the post-war booms and busts of the timber industry, the spotted owl/ancient forest debate, and the promises and perils of Oregon’s recreational tourism economy.

From nineteenth-century interactions between Native and non-Native peoples to the changing fortunes of the timber industry and questions about economic and environmental sustainability in the twenty-first century, the book offers important insights into the power dynamics in small communities. Struggle on the North Santiam will be of interest to scholars of the American West and thoughtful readers interested in Oregon and Pacific Northwest history.


About the author BOB H. REINHARDT is an assistant professor in the department of history at Boise State University, where he teaches, researches, and writes about the history of the American West, environmental history, public history, and the history of public health. He earned a PhD from the University of California, Davis, an MA from the University of Oregon, and a BA from Willamette University. He served as the executive director of the Willamette Heritage Center, held a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University, and taught at Western Oregon University and Willamette University. Bob is also the founder and director of Boise State University’s Working History Center.
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Related Posts

Excerpt from Bob H. Reinhardt’s Struggle on the North Santiam

Submitted by Isaiah Holbrook on May 21st, 2020

We’re excited to promote and celebrate the publishing birth month of Bob H. Reinhardt’s Struggle on the North Santiam: Power and Community on the Margins of the American West. With the restrictions and unfortunate outcomes of COVID-19, we offer an excerpt of Reinhardt’s brilliance as a satisfying distraction from these quarantine times.

 

INTRODUCTION

Next to a well-traveled highway on the margins of the American West, there is a place that seems easy to ignore. This particular place is the North Santiam Canyon, a fifty-one-mile stretch along Oregon’s Highway 22 on the western side of the Cascade mountain range, surrounded by Douglas fir trees on the banks of the North Santiam River. It takes about an hour, depending on speed traps, to drive through the canyon. A few landmarks jump out to motorists: Mt. Jefferson to the east, occasionally peeking out over the treetops; two large dams (Detroit Dam and its regulating dam, Big Cliff) and their full reservoirs or empty reservoir beds, depending on the season; and always the North Santiam River, burbling, swirling, crashing, pooling, and tumbling alongside the highway. Houses and buildings are scattered along the roadside, sometimes gathered into villages and towns, and perceptive drivers might even notice the signs alerting them that they have entered or left behind one of these communities. But driving along at fifty-five miles per hour, one would be forgiven for not finding anything remarkable or memorable about the North Santiam Canyon, like so many other marginal places in the American West.

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