tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342936082011-07-08T00:12:39.716-07:00An anthropological exploration of public portrayals, performances, and interpretations of the Old West, including the fur trade, missionaries, mining era, railroads, and newspapers.Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comBlogger341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-83191978152230542992009-07-17T08:20:00.000-07:002009-07-17T08:25:37.446-07:00

Dear Readers,I have decided to discontinue Pick and Shovel while I engage in new projects. I may start another weblog on a new topic, but for the time being will not continue posting to this site or my other research blog, Lewis and Clark Trail Watch.Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on, and responded to Pick and Shovel, and who has sent me emails with so many interesting questions

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-40227490216891725342008-07-13T22:52:00.000-07:002008-07-13T23:22:48.576-07:00

One more item before I start writing about mission sites: about a year ago, I had a post about Sarah Winnemucca and her father, Chief Winnemucca, as well as a tongue-in-cheek post about an article in the Sun tabloid in which Mark Twain supposedly once wrote about the prophecies of a Paiute man named "John Winnemucca" (and of whom I could find no actual evidence). The Winnemuccas were a well-known

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1405484681005324502008-07-11T10:20:00.000-07:002008-07-11T14:00:38.500-07:00

I make two or three trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, each year to visit family. One place I've always wanted to see over the years was the site of the original oasis that provided the reason for anyone stopping in the middle of this harsh desert landscape. I finally visited the 180-acre Springs Preserve this past March and it was well worth the wait (or procrastination) because the city (or state?--

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-51061131704522319972008-07-04T12:27:00.000-07:002008-07-06T12:07:42.866-07:00

One of the major staple foods of traditional native cultures throughout the Northwest was (and for many, still is) the edible roots of numerous plants including the blue-flowered camas (genus Camassia). Wild root crops abound at this latitude, with its cold winters and fairly short growing season, and indigenous societies at similar latitudes elsewhere in the world also devised ways to tap into

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-17713510495954401262007-12-04T12:32:00.000-08:002007-12-04T15:45:38.719-08:00

Many states have a collection of what they call heritage trees, old or famous or historic or unusual trees that contribute to the historical and cultural meaning of a region. Here in Oregon, one of our heritage trees happens to be the largest and tallest Sitka Spruce in the country, 216 feet tall and growing in the beautiful Coast Range along Highway 26 east of the Seaside/Cannon Beach

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-37810111949429664862007-09-23T19:55:00.000-07:002007-09-23T20:27:20.898-07:00

I love autumn best and here in the Grande Ronde Valley, the trees are starting to turn and the nights have a nip in the air. Classes are finally starting at my university and I've been busy scanning in my older photos of historical sites and assorted locations in the West. I will be submitting many new posts about topics I haven't mentioned yet, as well as adding to some of the things I've

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-67599848349149950902007-08-04T08:15:00.000-07:002007-08-15T19:12:51.839-07:00

It's ironic that I wrote about the Winnemuccas in my last post, because I soon after traveled through and stayed in Winnemucca, Nevada, on my way to a union workshop in Monterey, California. (Allow me to here plug my EOU teaching faculty and librarians union, the Associated Academic Professionals, Local 6200, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. I'm the newly-elected treasurer.)I've been

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-17024068979687656242007-07-24T17:34:00.000-07:002007-07-24T17:57:35.903-07:00

In the previous post, I was having fun with the "Indian prophecies" featured in the Sun. But the interesting thing is, there really was a family of well-known and important Paiute Indians by the name of Winnemucca at the time of Mark Twain's tenure at the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada.The most famous were father and daughter. His name was simply Winnemucca, sometimes referred

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-14521717550189529112007-07-12T19:52:00.000-07:002007-07-21T20:54:24.873-07:00

I could not resist buying the latest issue of the Sun at my local supermarket. Who doesn't want to know about the newly-revealed 100 secret Indian prophecies that will change your life forever, especially when they are all coming true?I was even more thrilled when I turned to the article and discovered that a 144-year-old feature story by Mark Twain written for the Territorial Enterprise (see my

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-11567825757448010942007-07-07T22:08:00.000-07:002007-07-07T22:22:56.830-07:00

In Disney’s animated film Pocahontas, the Indians and Jamestown colonists sing a dramatic song as they prepare for war in which each side condemns the other as “savages, savages, barely even human.” The point of these scenes and this song is to show the process of dehumanization that accompanies and makes possible killing and war. While this seems admirable enough on the surface, the film fails

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-40630908822334329562007-06-19T11:00:00.000-07:002007-07-07T22:27:28.106-07:00

The setting in historical romances is important, I think, because it evokes presumably more romantic golden eras when male-female relationships and social mores in general were better defined. I believe this allows for hyper-masculine male characters fending off bad guys on the one hand, but gives the female characters something to rebel against on the other. The women are all "fiesty," "

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-24858157276217777022007-06-12T21:30:00.000-07:002007-06-14T21:42:55.199-07:00

A student of mine once wrote a paper on "the culture of romance novels," stating that she read 300 of them for the project. Three hundred! I had never read one and was not even academically interested until I began to notice that paperback romances included stories involving white women and Native American men, and that the covers featured the usual bodice-ripper illustrations but with native

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-65049079864972691052007-05-23T08:13:00.000-07:002007-05-23T12:29:55.852-07:00

I'm going to take a moment on both my research blogs to plug Eastern Oregon University and encourage those thinking about going to college or just taking a course or two to come here to do it! We have no out-of-state tuition--that's right, wherever you're from, you pay the same as in-state students.Here are some useful links to inspire you to join us.EOU's HomepageThe College of Arts and

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-80283058708342463352007-05-12T17:09:00.000-07:002007-05-17T10:06:46.268-07:00

For those traveling in the Missoula area, a great side trip to take is to Garnet ghost town, about 30 miles east of Missoula on state highway 200, and another 11 miles south on a gravel road (look for signs). There you park your car and walk about 1/4 mile farther along a wooded path (there is handicapped parking closer in) until you suddenly find yourself on a ridge overlooking the town. From

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-85222954651969501732007-04-27T17:57:00.000-07:002007-05-17T10:04:16.693-07:00

Julia Bulette was a prostitute in 1860s Virginia City, Nevada. She was well known and admired in life; she became positively legendary following her brutal murder in 1867 and the trial and hanging of her confessed killer a year later.She worked out of a small house and was neither a madam herself nor one of several women in a brothel. All sorts of rumors about her circulated through town,

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-87742013379492568572007-03-21T09:45:00.000-07:002007-03-21T09:53:44.252-07:00

I have a soft spot for old Victorian-era photographs of people I don't know. You can sometimes find whole boxes of them in second-hand stores and flea markets. Who knows how they end up there, unknown and unclaimed by their descendants--if they have any?So I take them home and wonder who they were and what their lives were like. I love to examine the clothes and get ideas for future sewing and

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-6445333475739873712007-03-09T15:15:00.000-08:002007-03-10T09:22:19.298-08:00

It was about this time of year a few years ago that I made plans to go camping in Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah over my March spring break.I've lived in the western mountains for most of my adult life, so I have no excuse for neglecting to check out things like the elevation of the park. It's much farther south than the Pacific Northwest, and it's a "canyon" after all, so it'll be

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-57025270101251883522007-02-20T08:20:00.000-08:002007-02-21T19:56:13.570-08:00

Is it some structure in Las Vegas, perhaps one of the spectacular resorts on the Strip, like Caesar's Palace, or the Bellagio with its dancing fountains, or "Paris" with its 500-foot Eiffel Tower? No. According to tourist brochures and traveler's guides, the most photographed building in Nevada is the haunting ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite.Only a few buildings are left in

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-24689218247803833602007-02-09T20:48:00.000-08:002007-02-21T19:39:35.802-08:00

I have been to California's Death Valley twice: once in midsummer when my family and I stood outside our air-conditioned car for a short while to see what 125 degrees actually felt like (we checked the local weather and temperatures to know what to expect), and once in winter, when the weather was tolerable and the valley floor received some of its rare precipitation, a scant two inches per

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-61291207110603383112007-01-23T16:20:00.000-08:002007-01-26T12:41:28.791-08:00

Probably my favorite historic mining site is the Bonanza City/Custer area on the Yankee Fork River in central Idaho, near Stanley. There's very little left of the towns and structures there--it's definitely not Old Sacramento or either of the Virginia Cities--but something about the area just grabbed me the first time I went there and I go back almost every summer. I'll be writing about the

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-15296636487717267052007-01-03T12:12:00.000-08:002007-02-21T19:53:57.506-08:00

In most of the western mining camps, the loose gold flakes and occasional nugget recovered through placer mining techniques like panning and sluicing eventually played out. Depending on the location, if there was additional gold (or silver) embedded in the rocks or deep underground, more elaborate "hardrock" mining methods replaced the placer mines. Metal-bearing ores had to be crushed in stamp

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-75704180377105095412006-12-18T17:15:00.000-08:002006-12-25T13:48:40.356-08:00

The great image above of a pick-and-shovel-totin' Santa was created for me as a Secret Santa e-gift by one of my cohorts at the Inland Northwest Bloggers' Association. We "drew names" of people for whom to write or design something to post on the recipient's blog.Of course, when emailing the e-gift, the "secret" in Secret Santa is a secret no more! My Santa Claus is "Stebbijo" (aka Joanne

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-4509745228579973652006-12-12T13:20:00.000-08:002006-12-17T13:44:25.951-08:00

Over the past few years, more attention has been paid by interpretive facilities to the cargo and material culture employed by both native and nonnative denizens of the West. For example, during the recent Lewis and Clark bicentennial, numerous exhibits were created to take a closer look at the tools, supplies, food, and medicines carried by the expedition, as well as the similar categories of

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-36151890245169637262006-11-26T20:30:00.000-08:002006-11-27T10:23:43.881-08:00

I am much more familiar with the ghost towns and historic sites in the Rocky Mountain west than in the coastal areas, the Cascades, and the Sierra Nevada, although I have plans to do more traveling and exploring in those regions in the future. I now just want to share a few pictures I took during my Thanksgiving trip to my sister's in northern California.First things first: the Golden Gate Bridge

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-91365493132357410272006-11-16T21:50:00.000-08:002006-12-15T10:33:34.666-08:00

I'm fascinated by the journalism of the Old West: the newspapers and circulars, the reporters, the editors, the publishers. So many interesting publications, so many colorful characters--it's really a shame how bland and commercialized and interchangeable today's news media have become.I've already written about Mark Twain and his beginnings as a writer at the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-82296842950730441562006-11-11T18:20:00.000-08:002006-11-18T17:50:11.352-08:00

The state historic site of South Pass City, Wyoming, is quite extensive and features a couple dozen buildings that have been restored to resemble how they would have appeared at the turn of the 20th century when the town was in its heyday. The restoration of these buildings has been enhanced by the utilization of some of the 30,000 items that are original to the site, a truly remarkable historic

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1162448782849921112006-11-01T21:43:00.000-08:002006-11-10T14:05:44.109-08:00

Another area in the Eastern Oregon region that is little known to the "outside world," despite its dramatic history and great natural beauty, is the landscape surrounding the Owyhee River and its tributaries along Oregon's southeastern border with Idaho. This is the original territory of Native American tribes like the Bannocks and Paiutes, who fought well into the 1870s to try and preserve their

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1161550102295285082006-10-24T13:46:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:05:43.569-08:00

I'd like to say a bit more about the replica steam engines at Golden Spike National Historic Site and about some of the issues they raise pertaining to replicas and authenticity.The building of these locomotives began in the 1970s. Since the original engines had long-since been scrapped (alas!), they had to be reconstructed based on locomotive design plans from that era and microanalysis of

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1160105541192789792006-10-09T14:20:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:05:43.419-08:00

One of my colleagues here at Eastern, Cynthia "Sam" Eggert, read my earlier post about the Canyon City, Oregon, area and showed me some great historic photographs of Canyon City and the nearby community of John Day. Sam is from that part of the state. One of her relatives bought a suitcase full of "junk" at an estate sale and it contained old negatives of various scenes in the Canyon City/John

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1159506285929006572006-09-28T21:40:00.000-07:002006-11-23T21:17:50.273-08:00

One of the most fun and interesting historical reenactments I've seen is the recreation of the 1869 joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines to establish the nation's first transcontinental railroad. Golden Spike National Historic Site, while well off the beaten track in northern Utah and requiring some planning and effort to get there, is definitely worth the trip, especially if

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1159135538054128552006-09-24T15:50:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:05:42.211-08:00

Everyone's heard of the California Gold Rush, the Comstock Lode, and the rush to the Klondike in the far north, immortalized by Charlie Chaplin in one of his most famous silent films (The Gold Rush, naturally). Many others are familiar with the great Montana gold camps in Bannack, Virginia City, and Helena. But few seem to know about the similarly dramatic gold discoveries here in northeastern

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1158368412107956262006-09-17T20:35:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:05:40.827-08:00

I grew up in Illinois and there were two famous men who were always a major part of the culture: Abraham Lincoln, who had lived and was buried in the state capital city, and Mark Twain, associated with his Missisippi River lore.It wasn't until many, many years later, and long after I had become a Westerner, that I learned that Mark Twain actually got his start as a writer and journalist in

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1158439448289467382006-09-16T13:27:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:05:40.932-08:00

I'm working on a post about Mark Twain in the West, but realized I should say something about the photograph in the header, above. It's of South Pass City in Wyoming, a booming gold rush community in the mid-to-late 1800s and now a ghost town and state historic site. It's one of my favorite historic places, and I'll have lots of pictures of it and more to say about it in the future.The above is

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34293608.post-1158089805843996052006-09-12T12:34:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:05:40.550-08:00

In a week or two, I'll be expanding my research on museum and related interpretation of American western history, and will be posting my thoughts and photographs on this new blog, "Pick and Shovel." In the meantime, you might be interested in my research on interpretation of the Lewis and Clark expedition and bicentennial, posted currently on Lewis and Clark Trail Watch.Come on back to this site

Kathleen A. Dahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13823430314345158858noreply@blogger.com