Far Corner is the saga of a latter-day pioneer who invaded the Pacific Northwest wearing the only derby hat those parts had ever seen. Author Stewart H. Holbrook bought the hat in Boston just before he boarded the steam-cars to seek fame and fortune amidst the booms and busts of the roaring '20s. On his journey, he discovered there were still people who liked fried elk for breakfast and noticed that not all cowboys were six feet tall and lithe. He was delighted with a hamlet named Pluvius because one year it rained for 362 days and the other three days, according to the sole...

Holy Old Mackinaw is the rough and lusty story of the American lumberjack at work and at play, from Maine to Oregon.

In these modern days timber is harvested by cigarette-smoking married men, whose children go to school in buses, but for nearly three hundred years the logger was a real pioneer who ranged through the forests of many states, steel calks in his boots and ax in his fist, a plug of chewing handy, who emerged at intervals into the towns to call on soft ladies and drink hard liquor.

Author Stewart Holbrook tells of the flowering of Bangor, the first of the...

The Columbia commemorates the disciplining and conversion of a wilderness river from a water passageway to a powerhouse and a source of irrigation. Here is the story of its explorers who came by boat and by foot: the bickering and battles between Hudson's Bay Company and Astor's fur trappers, the settlers that turned politicians to keep the Oregon Territory in the U.S. and to make two states out of it, the coming of steamboats, the potent force of the railways, and later the highways. The Columbia follows the story of the canals, locks, and dams which flooded old landmarks to give...