Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940

Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books

by William G. Robbins, William Cronon (Foreword)

Landscapes of Promise is the first comprehensive environmental history of the early years of a state that has long been associated with environmental protection. Covering the period from early human habitation to the end of World War II, William Robbins shows that the reality of Oregon's environmental history involves far more than a discussion of timber cutting and land-use planning.

Robbins demonstrates that ecological change is not only a creation of modern industrial society. Native Americans altered their environment in a number of ways, including the planned annual burning of grasslands and light-burning of understory forest debris. Early Euro-American settlers who thought they were taming a virgin wilderness were merely imposing a new set of alterations on an already modified landscape.

Beginning with the first 18th-century traders on the Pacific Coast, alterations to Oregon's landscape were closely linked to the interests of global market forces. Robbins uses period speeches and publications to document the increasing commodification of the landscape and its products. "Environment melts before the man who is in earnest," wrote one Oregon booster in 1905, reflecting prevailing ways of thinking.

In an impressive synthesis of primary sources and historical analysis, Robbins traces the transformation of the Oregon landscape and the evolution of our attitudes toward the natural world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Meg]

Pretty representative of a certain wave of doing 'environmental' history, in the vein of William Cronon and others. Strong emphasis on the market-driven transformation of the landscape. While the chapter on "the native ecological context" provides a useful perspective and certainly is a course-correction from previous ways of telling settler history, the reliance solely upon white historical sources is quite notable. This is a limitation, I think, of certain kinds of historical methodologies unwilling to borrow from either ethnographic sources or oral history. Certainly much writing on similar themes done today, only a couple decades later, would be more inclined to make sure that a wider variety of voices are explicitly present and part of shaping the narrative.

[Arlene Weible · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history told in a very dry academic style. Too bad, more accessible writing would make this a must read for all Oregonians.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very readable history about the settling of Oregon and how it changed the landscape. For a while, then I got incredibly bogged down in the middle. It was really interesting when talking about the early pioneers however it got quite boring when talking about the economic development and politics. I felt it lost the focus on how development changed the land.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books about the environmental history of Oregon