Local Newspapers, Then and Now

I’ve read several articles and editorials in recent months about the demise of local newspapers. An editorial in The New York Times last November reported that 204 counties in the United States had no local newspaper, and 1,562 counties had only one. The Medill Local News Initiative found that in […]

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Ben Holladay, Transportation Tycoon

I’ve written before about rail development in Oregon and the fierce competition between the East Side line and the West Side line in laying rails around Portland. Ben Holladay was the owner of the successful East Side line, and he had his finger (indeed, his whole fist) in many other […]

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Swapping Kids in Madras, Oregon

In response to my last email newsletter, one reader wrote me about how her family regularly switched children from parents to grandparents for visits. That reminded me of how my family did the same when I was growing up. The childhood swaps I remember best were in Madras, Oregon. Madras, […]

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Early History of Portland, Oregon

I mentioned in an earlier post that my next novel will deal with the development of railroads in Oregon, probably in the early 1870s. I also think I will set much of the book in Portland, Oregon, which by this time had become the predominant city in Oregon, far outpacing […]

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Railroad Development in Oregon

The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, linking California to the Eastern United States. But it took many more years for Oregon to become a part of the national railroad network. I wrote in an earlier post about Byron Pengra, who started a military road in Oregon in 1864, intending […]

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Researching an Oregon Parsonage

Many of the scenes in my current work-in-progress take place in a Methodist parsonage in Albany, Oregon. The minister, his wife, and their young daughter live there in 1867. Albany in 1867 was a small town, though it was the county seat of Linn County, Oregon. I envisioned a small […]

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