The smiling country: A history of the Methow Valley

By Sally Portman

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0963692100
• ISBN13: 9780963692108
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Sun Mountain Resorts
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The story of one of the last places settled by Euro-Americans

This well written, engaging paperback book recounts the history of human settlement in the Methow Valley of north central Washington which is just east of the Cascade Mountains and just south of the Canadian border. There are three initial chapters about the geology, pre-European-contact Native Americans who lived in the area and early to mid-19th Century penetration by fur trapping parties and military expeditions. Then the author presents a series of highly readable chapters about the activities and experiences of American miners, ranchers, farmers, loggers and finally winter and summer fun seekers who tried to carve a living or just a good time out of the spectacular landscape starting in the late 1880s. It's somewhat sobering to contemplate how many waves of economic activity and human occupancy ebbed and flowed over this small region in hardly more than a hundred years. Besides recounting the facts the author presents lots of interesting anecdotes in the words of the pioneer settlers themselves or those that knew them. Dozens of well reproduced period black and white photos show the reader what the people and places looked like in earlier years, a single map shows some of the locations mentioned and there is a bibliography at the end of each chapter (the author is a librarian!) for those who want to dig deeper. Highly recommended as a must-read for anyone who lives in or visits the Methow Valley as well as anyone interested in Washington state history or the history of Euro-American western North American settlement in general. It's also an excellent example for anyone who wants to write an interesting regional history.