Best of
Local-History

2002

The High Sierra of California


Gary Snyder - 2002
    Combining the dramatic and meticulous work of printmaker Tom Killion -- accented by selected writings of John Muir -- and the journal writings of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder, The High Sierra of California is a tribute to the bold, jagged peaks that have inspired generations of naturalists, artists, and writers.Originally printed in a limited, handmade, letterpress edition, The High Sierra of California is now available in an affordable, full-color trade edition.

Maud Hart Lovelace's Deep Valley: A Guidebook of Mankato Places in the Betsy-Tacy Series


Julie A. Schrader - 2002
    Maud Hart Lovelace was born in Mankato in 1892 and lived there until 1910. The author of six novels and eighteen children's books, Maud often remarked that she always felt destined to become an author. She is best known for her beloved series of Betsy-Tacy books, which to a great extent depicts her childhood days in Mankato, Minnesota, the fictionalized "Deep Valley."Maud's books have created a historical account of life for one little girl growing up in the Midwest at the turn of the century. Her stories of small town life, family traditions and enduring friendship have captured the hearts of her fans over the years.This guidebook is designed to take you on a tour of the Mankato places Maud so accurately describes in her Betsy-Tacy series books. Some of the many places included are the Carnegie Library, Pleasant Grove School, the High School, Lincoln Park, Saulpaugh Hotel, Front Street, the Opera House and the Majestic Theater as well as the homes of her characters.This book is available directly from the publisher, Minnesota Heritage Publishing.

Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls


Robert M. Thorson - 2002
    They took three billion man-hours to build. And even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story—about the geothermal forces that formed their stones, the tectonic movements that brought them to the surface, the glacial tide that broke them apart, the earth that held them for so long, and about the humans who built them.Stone walls tell nothing less than the story of how New England was formed, and in Robert Thorson's hands they live and breathe. "The stone wall is the key that links the natural history and human history of New England," Thorson writes. Millions of years ago, New England's stones belonged to ancient mountains thrust up by prehistoric collisions between continents. During the Ice Age, pieces were cleaved off by glaciers and deposited—often hundreds of miles away—when the glaciers melted. Buried again over centuries by forest and soil buildup, the stones gradually worked their way back to the surface, only to become impediments to the farmers cultivating the land in the eighteenth century, who piled them into "linear landfills," a place to hold the stones. Usually the biggest investment on a farm, often exceeding that of the land and buildings combined, stone walls became a defining element of the Northeast's landscape, and a symbol of the shift to an agricultural economy.Stone walls layer time like Russian dolls, their smallest elements reflecting the longest spans, and Thorson urges us to study them, for each stone has its own story. Linking geological history to the early American experience, Stone by Stone presents a fascinating picture of the land the Pilgrims settled, allowing us to see and understand it with new eyes.

Turquoise Unearthed: An Illustrated Guide an Illustrated Guide


Joe P. Lowry - 2002
    Author Joe Dan Lowry is recognized worldwide as a leading expert on the subject, and Turquoise Unearthed: An Illustrated Guide is the definitive resource for rock hounds and serious collectors alike. Lowry describes the fascinating history of turquoise mining in the American Southwest and reveals the astonishing variety of colors and forms that make this a gemstone like no other. Among Native American peoples of the Southwest, turquoise is especially prized, with blue stones symbolizing Father Sky and greener ones evoking Mother Earth. This lavishly illustrated volume also features some of the finest examples of antique and contemporary Southwest Indian turquoise jewelry.

The Killer in the Attic: And More True Tales of Crime and Disaster from Cleveland's Past


John Stark Bellamy II - 2002
    Killer in the Attic is the fourth collection of gruesome, horrible, tragic, and despicable--but true--tales from Cleveland's history. In Bellamy's latest book, the history expert serves up 26 more detailed and compelling accounts of the unspeakable.

Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago


Eric Klinenberg - 2002
    The heat index, which measures how the temperature actually feels on the body, would hit 126 degrees by the time the day was over. Meteorologists had been warning residents about a two-day heat wave, but these temperatures did not end that soon. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had buckled; the records for electrical use were shattered; and power grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two days. And by July 20, over seven hundred people had perished-more than twice the number that died in the Chicago Fire of 1871, twenty times the number of those struck by Hurricane Andrew in 1992—in the great Chicago heat wave, one of the deadliest in American history.Heat waves in the United States kill more people during a typical year than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of the city's vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a "social autopsy," examining the social, political, and institutional organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it ought to have been.Starting with the question of why so many people died at home alone, Klinenberg investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater mortality than others, how the city government responded to the crisis, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported on and explained these events. Through a combination of years of fieldwork, extensive interviews, and archival research, Klinenberg uncovers how a number of surprising and unsettling forms of social breakdown—including the literal and social isolation of seniors, the institutional abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment of public assistance programs—contributed to the high fatality rates. The human catastrophe, he argues, cannot simply be blamed on the failures of any particular individuals or organizations. For when hundreds of people die behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies, everyone is implicated in their demise.As Klinenberg demonstrates in this incisive and gripping account of the contemporary urban condition, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made visible have by no means subsided as the temperatures returned to normal. The forces that affected Chicago so disastrously remain in play in America's cities, and we ignore them at our peril.

Down And Out: The Life and Death of Minneapolis’s Skid Row


Edwin C. Hirschoff - 2002
    Encompassing some twenty-five blocks centering on the intersection of Hennepin, Washington, and Nicollet Avenues, the neighborhood was demolished between 1959 and 1963 as part of the first federally funded urban renewal project in America. Gathered here for the first time, Edwin C. Hirschoff's stark and moving images of the Gateway district's final days -- its streets, buildings, and parks, the rubble, smoke, and heavy equipment of its destruction -- eloquently capture its demise. Down and Out provides a unique historical perspective and the most extensive photographic record available of the Gateway demolition project.Joseph Hart's engaging and comprehensive essay complements Hirschoff's photographs by detailing the district's social and economic evolution and the political decision making that led to its destruction. Hart presents a popular history of Minneapolis's skid row and the people who lived there, migrant workers who learned that changes in the local economy could quickly degrade their status from valued laborer to societal menace (vagrant, tramp, or bum). By capturing the texture of life on skid row, Hart reveals the lost American culture of a bygone community.

Dakota Life in the Upper Midwest


Samuel William Pond - 2002
    Pond and his brother Gideon built a cabin near Cloud Man's village of the Dakota Indians on the shore of Lake Calhoun--now present-day Minneapolis--intending to preach Christianity to the Indians. The brothers were to spend nearly twenty years learning the Dakota language and observing how the Indians lived.In the 1860s and 1870s, after the Dakota had fought a disastrous war with the whites who had taken their land, Samuel Pond recorded his recollections of the Indians "to show what manner of people the Dakotas were . . . while they still retained the customs of their ancestors."Pond's work, first published in 1908, is now considered a classic. Gary Clayton Anderson's introduction discusses Pond's career and the effects of his background on this work, "unrivaled today for its discussion of Dakota material culture and social, political, religious, and economic institutions."

Eloise: Poorhouse, Farm, Asylum and Hospital 1839-1984


Patricia Ibbotson - 2002
    Today, all that remains are five buildings and a smokestack.From only 35 residents on 280 acres in 1839, the complex grew dramatically after the Civil War until the total land involved was 902 acres and the total number of patients was about 10,000. Only one of them, the Kay Beard Building, is currently used.In Eloise: Poorhouse, Farm, Asylum, and Hospital, 1839-1984, this institution and medical center that cared for thousands of people over the years, is brought back to life. The book, in over 220 historic photographs, follows the facility's roots, from its beginnings as a poorhouse, to the founding of its psychiatric division and general hospital. The reader will also be able to trace the changing face of psychiatric care over the years. The book effectively captures what it was like to live, work, and play on Eloise's expansive grounds.

Cleveland Heights:: The Making of an Urban Suburb


Marian J. Morton - 2002
    The region was once home to Native American tribes including the Erie and Seneca, and stalwart pioneers established settlements in the area as early as the late eighteenth century. In the post-Civil War period, as Cleveland was becoming an industrial metropolis, affluent residents began moving to the newly developed "garden suburbs," anxious to live closer to nature and farther from the smoky city and its increasingly diverse population. Born of this same desire, Cleveland Heights was founded in 1901. Here, in this isolated countryside owned by substantial families like the Silsbys, Minors, Comptons, and Taylors, entrepreneurs and city officials envisioned a clean and comfortable suburb for Cleveland's elite. Officially designated a city in 1921, Cleveland Heights quickly became not the homogenized suburb envisioned by early developers, but a community of widely divergent neighborhoods and people. Newcomers belonged to varying class, religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. A century after its founding, Cleveland Heights has become an "inner-ring urban suburb," boasting gracious homes of architectural distinction and attractive parks, but also facing the modern challenges of a dwindling population and commercial districts in need of economic revitalization. This new volume illustrates, in both word and image, the evolving life of Cleveland Heights from its beginning as part of East Cleveland Township, one of the region's first suburbs, to the present day.

Inventing the Charles River


Karl Haglund - 2002
    Yet few realize that this apparently natural landscape is a totally fabricated public space. Two hundred years ago the Charles was a tidal river, edged by hundreds of acres of salt marshes and mudflats. Inventing the Charles River describes how, before the creation of the basin could begin, the river first had to be imagined as a single public space. The new esplanades along the river changed the way Bostonians perceived their city; and the basin, with its expansive views of Boston and Cambridge, became an iconic image of the metropolis.The book focuses on the precarious balance between transportation planning and stewardship of the public realm. Long before the esplanades were realized, great swaths of the river were given over to industrial enterprises and transportation--millponds, bridges, landfills, and a complex network of road and railway bridges. In 1929, Boston's first major highway controversy erupted when a four-lane road was proposed as part of a new esplanade. At twenty-year intervals, three riverfront road disputes followed, successively more complex and disputatious, culminating in the lawsuits over Scheme Z, the Big Dig's plan for eighteen lanes of highway ramps and bridges over the river. More than four hundred photographs, maps, and drawings illustrate past and future visions for the Charles and document the river's place in Boston's history.

The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord


Ray Raphael - 2002
    In rural towns such as Worcester, Massachusetts, local democracy set down roots well before the Boston patriots made their moves in the fight for independence. Until now, few of these true founding fathers have made it into the historical record.

Winthrop


Winthrop Historic Commission - 2002
    Winthrop's insularity and geographic position as a natural barrier between Boston and the Atlantic has created a unique place to live-and the best kept secret around-a place to enjoy the spectacle of the sea, the folksiness of a small town and, with its proximity to Boston, a pinch of urban sensibility. Winthrop explores the fascinating and diverse history of the town, first as an early Native American habitat and then as the site of Colonial agrarians, wealthy landowners, and a copper works. It takes you to the waterfront, which became a magnet for tourists; the yacht clubs and hotels that opened; and the beach activities that became a passion for sweltering city dwellers. Winthrop shows how, from the American Revolution through the Cold War, the town played host to the military, having forts, cannons, radar, and tunnels, and how the town nearly had the distinction of having the world's first electric transit system, a monorail, which met a mysterious demise days before the start of construction.

The Forgotten Storm: The Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925


Wallace E. Akin - 2002
    The amazing true story of the deadliest tornado in American history, as told by a survivor.

White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to Be Indian


Lawney L. Reyes - 2002
    My attention was directed to the area where Kettle Falls once flowed. As I stood there the wind came. As I listened I imagined that it talked to me. It seemed that it was telling me of how things once were. I began to think of friends and relatives who were no longer living. They began to appear before me, perched on the large rocks, fishing for the great salmon."In his distinctive voice, Lawney Reyes, grandson of Pic Ah Kelowna or White Grizzly Bear of the Sin Aikst, relates the history of his family and his people. The Sin Aikst are now known as the Lakes tribe, absorbed into the Colville Confederated Tribes of eastern Washington. And where Kettle Falls once flowed and the Sin Aikst once fished are places that exist now only in memory, flooded when the Grand Coulee Dam was completed in 1942. Reyes uses personal and family history to explore the larger forces that have confronted all Native Americans: displacement, acculturation, and the potent force of self-renewal.The son of a Filipino immigrant and a mother who traced her ancestry to the earliest known leaders of the Sin Aikst, Reyes paints a vivid picture of his early life in the Indian village of Inchelium, destroyed by the building of the dam. Reyes describes the loss of homeland and traditional ways of life, the scarcities that followed, and the experiences of a court-ordered Indian boarding school in Oregon. These well-known facts of loss and injustice take on a compelling dimension in Reyes's blend of history and autobiography, brought to life by the vivid images and personalities he describes.Despite the loss of heritage beneath the waters of the Columbia River and the flood of white acculturation, Reyes and his younger brother, the late Native American leader Bernie Whitebear, were able to fashion rich lives in a changed world, lives that honor the past while engaging with the present.

Voices of a Thousand People: The Makah Cultural and Research Center


Patricia Pierce Erikson - 2002
    This ethnography richly portrays how a community embraced the archaeological discovery of Ozette village in 1970 and founded the Makah Cultural and Research Center (MCRC) in 1979. Oral testimonies, participant observation, and archival research weave a vivid portrait of a cultural center that embodies the self-image of a Native American community in tension with the identity assigned to it by others.

The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720


E. Brooks Holifield - 2002
    

Inspector Morse Country


Cliff Goodwin - 2002
    The pubs, churches, university colleges, stately homes, hotels and countryside in and around the city form a real-life backdrop to Morse's investigations in Colin Dexter's 13 novels. This illustrated guide to the places in which Morse lived and worked is full of facts and trivia for Morse addicts, whether you're an armchair fan or you're visiting Oxford and wish to follow in the irascible detective's footsteps.

German Migration to Missouri: My Family's Story


Paul C. Nagel - 2002
    Nagel started investigating his own heritage. What he discovered will encourage anyone curious about long-ago branches of the family tree. "There is something stirring about finding a bond with a remote grandmother of grandfather who struggle to survive when the Black Death stalked Europe, " Nagel writes, "or who had the courage to travel halfway around the globe to a place called Missouri." With hard work, plenty of luck and a yen to know why thins happened, Nagel found forebears as far back as the 1500s and fleshed out their stories. Then he tracked generation after generation through good times and adversity, through public esteem and private shame. Paul Nagel's family represents only a fragment of the story of German migration to Missouri, which in turn represents only a fragment of the story of America. Yet in his hands that fragment brings alive the story of all people whose ancestors escaped an Old World and helped build a new.

The Wildwoods in Vintage Postcards


James D. Ristine - 2002
    With more than two hundred vintage postcards, The Wildwoods looks back at the coastal towns in the early 1900s. Glimpse the long-lost natural beauty of Magnolia Lake and the primeval forests that gave Wildwood its name. See commercial fishermen leaving from the beaches of Holly Beach or the docks of Anglesea to practice their livelihood as recreational fishermen head out to sea on crowded party boats for a day of angling. Witness Fourth of July celebrations, baby parades, and automobile and yacht races. Visit the architectural styling of the early homes, churches, and schools, as well as the hotels that once provided accommodations to ever increasing numbers of vacationers.