Beavers, Firs, Salmon, and Falling Water: Pacific Northwest Regionalism and the Environment

OHS neg., QrHi 104449 *&*'* 1'U ??K 11; ?? :ra 7* irt 1.-1 wt? ?f?: i ?fc \&; F^fc ^ ?Vt ?n * 150 OHQ vol. 104, no. 2 WilliamL. Lang Beavers, Firs, Salmon, and Falling Water PacificNorthwest Regionalism and theEnvironment The idea of the Pacific Northwest as region has long been associated with two related phenomena: geographical isolation and natural wealth. The descriptions have changed over time, for isolation and natural wealth have been strik ingly affected by historical events, but theynonetheless seem to have main tained an importance that until very recently has been the typology for understanding the Pacific Northwest. Isolation might be translated here into distance from themetropolis and lucrative markets or into an ab sence of efficient transportation for goods and people. Natural wealth might be defined as the part of the environment that human communities ? both resident and alien ? have coveted formaterial gain. It is the second of these characteristics that is the subject of this essay. The idea of region is contested terrain.1At once assumed to be the antithesis of national commonality and the affirmation of the peculiari ties of local place, region is measured inways as important and diverse as language dialect, architecture, cuisine, and even jokes. More important perhaps, as David Wrobel and Michael Steiner recently advised, the idea of region in the West isdynamic. It is an idea "in a constant state of flux," in which chronology is fundamental. When a region is called "region" is as important as what geography it encompasses. Referring to the Pacific Northwest as a place and region meant different things in 1850,1880,1930, ? 2003Oregon HistoricalSocietyLang, Beavers, Firs, Salmon, and Falling Water 151 and 1950. Its scope isdifferent, and what the term includes inphysiographic and cultural elements isdifferent. InDonald Meinig's magisterial The Shap ing ofAmerica, the Pacific Northwest in 1850 is a slivered "domain" set near the river in the lowerWillamette Valley, remote from themetropolis and hardly the essence of a region aswe might understand it today. Yet, in this "Oregon Country," as Bill Robbins has explained, the newly settled popu lation stood on the crest of a "great divide" of significant ecological change that would soon begin to characterize the place as a region. There was shape to this region, if only in its potential and in the transformative power of subsequent events.2 A century later, in 1948,maps produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers presented a dramatically different portrait of the region. The Pacific Northwest looks like a developed metropolis of engineered connec tions across thousands of square miles, including transportation, com munication, and alterations to the landform ? the kind of depiction that seems to contradict geography. The flux of change from theOregon Coun try in 1850 and the engineers' Northwest in 1950 is evident in new and increased population, new relationships between humans and the envi ronment they inhabit, and new constructions of place through economic and political mediation. The difference a century made in the definition of region isnot surprising, but what should we make of it?This iswhere we face themost dynamic aspect of change in the definition of region: the role of perception and the assignment ofmeaning.3 Aprofound connection between geography and history is embedded in the questions posed about the definition of re gion. The subjects and perspectives of historical studies change ? over time, but theirmost important focus is the study of hu man actions and perceptions. Without human creativity as a point of focus, philosopher of history Leonard Guelke argues, historical inquiry loses itsunique characteristic. Human perception and themeanings people have ascribed to their perceptions is the heart of the historical enterprise. In R.G. Collingwood's terms, "all history is the history of thought," and that enormous tent of inquiry includes, as Guelke explains, "human use and habitation of the earth as a function of human thought."4 Cultural geographers probe this realm, even as they caution us that the construction of place and region are highly contingent and relational. In short, what we call region and place are constructs that describe, as geographer Robert David Sack puts it, relationships among "forces, per spectives, place and space, and self." Grand Coulee...