Product Description

Recounted in a fresh style that's fun for armchair travelers and hikers alike, this guidebook tells the stories behind 56 of Oregon's most scenic historic sites. Come follow Lewis and Clark's trail across Tillamook Head. Ride with Chief Joseph on his tragic retrat through Hells Canyon. Discover paths to fire lookouts, lighthouses, and abandoned gold mines. Relive legends, discoveries, scandals, and triumphs that rocked the West. Come hike Oregon's history!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191767 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 319 pages

Review
Oregon was settled by walkers. Not only did North America's first tribes arrive here on foot via an Alaskan land bridge, but most of the Oregon Trail's pioneers walked -- hiking beside their covered wagons toward the dream they called Oregon.

Today the best way to explore the region's history is still by trail. On Tillamook Head, for example, you can retrace the Lewis and Clark expedition's steps through the rainforest, breathing the tangy salt air they breathed upon discovery of a sudden Pacific Ocean viewpoint. In Hells Canyon you can hike amid towering badlands on the actual route of Chief Joseph's tragic trail of tears. In Southern Oregon you can prowl through redwood groves to the bomb crater left by a daring Japanese attack in World War II. Gold mines, lookout towers, and wagon trails -- the story of Oregon is printed on the land for hikers to read. Oregon's grandest museum is the great outdoors. This book is your ticket of admission. -- Anonymous Reviewer

About the Author
William L. Sullivan is the author of seven books and numerous articles about Oregon, including a regular outdoor column for Eugene Weekly. A fifth-generation Oregonian, Sullivan began hiking at the age of five and has been exploring new trails ever since. After receiving an English degree from Cornell University and studying at Germany's Heidelberg University, he earned an M.A. from the University of Oregon.

In 1985 Sullivan set out to investigate Oregon's wilderness on a 1,361-mile solo backpacking trek from the state's westernmost shore at Cape Blanco to Oregon's easternmost point in Hells Canyon. His journal of that two-month adventure, published as "Listening for Coyote," was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction and topped the New York Times' year-end review of travel books.

Sullivan's hobbies include backcountry ski touring, playing the harpsichord, reading Danish novels, and promoting libraries. He and his wife Janell live in Eugene, but spend summers in a log cabin they built by hand on a roadless stretch of Oregon's Siletz River.

Sullivan has also authored a popular series of "100 Hikes" guidebooks to the regions of Oregon. Titles in that series include "100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon," covering Mt. Hood, the Columbia Gorge, Mt. St. Helens, and the Portland area; "100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades," covering the popular Three Sisters, Mt. Jefferson, Bend, and Eugene areas; "100 Hikes in Southern Oregon," including Crater Lake National Park, the Rogue River, the Siskiyous, the Trinity Alps, and Mt. Shasta; and "100 Hikes/Travel Guide: Oregon Coast & Coast Range," describing not only the hiking trails of the scenic Pacific shore, but also the campgrounds, beaches, lighthouses, aquariums, canoeing/kayaking options, bicycle paths, and birdwatching sites.

Sullivan's next book, "A Deeper Wild," will be published in April, 2000. Fifteen years in the writing, this historical novel is based on the true adventures of Joaquin Miller, the swashbuckling Oregon Country gold miner, editor, pony express rider, horse thief, and county judge who won international renown in 1872 as the "Poet of the Sierras."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Hike #10. CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT

Far from being disappointed, Lewis and Clark celebrated when they first sighted the Pacific Ocean from Cape Disappointment, a dramatic headland on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Those stalwart explorers had trekked nearly 4000 miles across the continent. Today the trail up Cape Disappointment is still inspiring, but the hike is much shorter. It also features a number of additional historic attractions, including a lighthouse, an artillery bunker, and a museum.

Considering that the Columbia River is seven miles wide at its mouth, explorers to the Oregon Coast had failed to discover this "Great River of the West" for a surprisingly long time. Neither Drake nor Juan de Fuca noticed it on their voyages in the late 1500s. The second flurry of sea explorations in the late 1700s also had bad luck. Juan Perez piloted Spanish ships along the coast here in both 1774 and 1775. The second time, steering Bruno de Heceta's vessel, he reported a bay here that he thought might be a river. But the crew was sick with scurvy and there was no time to investigate. Three years later Cook sailed by without even reporting a bay.

By 1788, freelance fur trading ships were routinely plying the coast. British captain John Meares, sailing under a Portuguese flag of convenience, stumbled into a storm here and desperately sought a harbor. He fled toward the Columbia River opening "with every encouraging expectation" that it would be the great river of legend. But breakers on the river's shallow bar convinced him he must be mistaken. Angrily, he named the river mouth Deception Bay, and the nearby headland Cape Disappointment.In 1792 the British admiralty sent Captain George Vancouver with two ships to chart every nook and cranny of the Pacific Northwest coast, hoping that Cook had missed an inlet or navigable river that might yet allow some kind of Northwest Passage. When Vancouver reached Meare's Deception Bay, he noted that the blue ocean suddenly turned the color of a muddy river, but decided this was "the probable consequence of some streams falling into the bay." He sailed past, "not considering this opening worthy of more attention."

Two days later Vancouver paused alongside a small American trading ship, the Columbia, captained by one Robert Gray of Boston. Gray told the Britishers that he'd just sailed past Deception Bay too, and believed it really was a river. The current, Gray said, had been so strong he couldn't sail his ship against it. Vancouver scoffed and sailed north to map Puget Sound. Meanwhile, Gray went back to take another look at the deceptive bay. On May 11, 1792, he plowed across the bar's breakers and suddenly found himself sailing on the long-sought River of the West. He christened it the Columbia for his ship, traded with the local Clatsop tribe for sea otter furs, and sailed a few days later toward an outpost at Nootka, where he left a sketch of his findings as a courtesy to fellow travelers.

Two months later Vancouver stopped at Nootka too. As soon as he saw Gray's sketch, he realized he'd been beaten to the discovery of the great river by a Yankee trader, and that the United States now had a viable claim to the whole of the Oregon Country the river drained. Trying to recover from his error, Vancouver immediately sent the smaller of his two ships across the river bar. Under the command of Lieutenant Broughton, a crew spent three weeks carefully charting the waterway as far east as the Sandy River, near present-day Troutdale. They named Mt. Hood after the British admiral who had outgunned the Americans in the Revolutionary War. They named Mt. St. Helens for a town near Liverpool. They named Broughton's Bluff and Point Vancouver. They performed an official claiming ceremony for Britain. But it was no use -- the damned Yankee had found the river first.

When Thomas Jefferson became President ten years later, he was painfully aware how tenuous the United States' claims to the Oregon Country were. Gray had not actually planted an American flag. His captain's log noted that he landed merely "to view the Country." The words "and take possession" had been added to Gray's log later, but they were obviously in a different hand.

Jefferson envisioned an American empire, convinced that the United States must one day expand to the Pacific. In one of his first official acts as President, he quietly negotiated purchase of the vast Louisiana country from the French, annexing land from New Orleans to the Rocky Mountains. Then he sent Congress a secret request for $2500 to finance an overland exploration of the new tract. Jefferson chose his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead the expedition, and explained to him that the goal was grander. The Corps of Discovery would not go merely to the Rockies. They would continue an extra thousand miles beyond United States territory to the Pacific Ocean. There they would plant a flag at the Columbia River's mouth to back up Gray's claim.

Lewis chose a co-leader with frontier experience, William Clark, and together they left St. Louis with forty-three men on May 14, 1804. Their Corps of Discovery had barely reached present-day North Dakota before weather forced them to set up a winter camp. There they met Sacajawea, a sixteen-year-old Shoshone girl. She agreed to come along as an interpreter with her French-Canadian husband and baby.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!
After moving to Oregon a few months ago, I discovered this gem of a book. While most hiking books will have plenty of information about where to go and what to see, I've never seen one that's just plain fun to read before. The book is full of interesting and amusing stories that will keep you turning pages late into the night. And, even better, the places that are described--you can hike them! One "hike" described is through downtown Portland that describes the flood of 1894 (among other things). Sullivan writes, "Chinese locals staged a gala boat race from the New Market Theater up Second Street to Stark and back on First. Winning time for the eight-block course was five minutes flat, a record that is likely to stand for some time." Last weekend I did the Tillamook Head hike (#11). If you haven't heard the story behind Tillamook Lighthouse located a mile offshore, pick up this book and read about it. You won't be disappointed! It's the best darned hiking book I've ever read in my life!

What a Great Book!
My husband bought me this book because we're moving to Oregon; I'm thrilled with it, both the book and the move. Mr. Sullivan's writing style is wonderful. It is amazing what this guy knows about every nook and cranny of the state. I am eager to explore the terrain the author describes and look forward to reading his other books on hiking in Oregon. Every travel or hiking book should strive to be as informative and interesting as this one. Alas, its rarely the case. This is a special book.

Fantastic Book--Great Research
I really enjoyed this book. I own all of his hiking books and have done about 50-60 different hikes (some many times) because of him. I have lived in Oregon all of my life and did not know many of these stories that William tells in this book. My favorite part is about Silver Creek Falls State Park and how they use to float cars over the South Falls for tourists to view for ten cents. I also like the story about the building of the lighthouse on an island of off Tillamook.
I highly recomend this book and I hope William Sullivan writes more history books, because he is very well researched and is a very good author with an easy to follow writing style.