Trail guides now available!
Portland Forest Hikes and Hiking from Portland to the Coast now available at Powell's, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and other major book retailers.
Author readings scheduled at Powell's (SE Hawthorne) on March 9th at 7:30 PM. Also at Annie Bloom Books in Hillsdale on March 17th at 7 PM.-
Recent Posts
- New Patreon site to showcase Pacific Northwest folklore
- It takes a Forest. Part 2
- It takes a forest. Part 1
- December 2nd 2016 meeting of the Salmonberry Trail Intergovernmental Agency
- What’s in a name?
- The chaos at the end of Belding Road.
- My book, “Hiking From Portland to the Coast” is now available!
- North Fork of the Salmonberry – alternative access to the Salmonberry River
- Please stay off the Salmonberry Trail until it’s safe! Other hikes include:
- Salmonberry Trail Intergovernmental Agency – 3rd meeting
- Salmonberry Trail Agency gains traction at Feb 5th meeting.
- Metro: Stop banning dogs from our regional parks!
- Salmonberry Trail Intergovernmental Agency hesitates at first meeting.
- What’s up with building the Salmonberry Trail?
- Excerpt from coming book on NW Oregon: What was Illahee?
- The river that connects us; the river that divides us.
- Tales from the Salmonberry River
- Moonshining along the Lower Columbia River.
- Kerfuffle in the St. Helens Schoolyard.
- Be careful what you ask for.
- The Grange movement – the Internet of its day.
- “Animals to Avoid”
- The Wreck of the 104
- 32 Indian and Pioneer Trails in the North Coast range – compiled by R. L. Benson
- Shoot-out at the Sophie Mozee homestead!
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Setting up and maintaining the information behind this site is a huge undertaking, and any contribution that you can make to cover expenses would be most gratefully accepted. Happy Trails, Jim Thayer
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A different perspective on walking in the woods…
Upon reading my materials and observations on the Oregon Coast Range the question frequently arises as to what distinguishes my perspectives on this landscape from that of others. I can’t say I really thought much about this while I was … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Pisgah Home Road – what’s behind this curious name?
What an odd name “Pisgah Home Road” is! The name refers to the Mountain from which Moses first saw the promised land. But the local story about this mountain road above Scappoose is even more interesting… Apparently, it refers to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Portland landscape 200 years ago.
When I’m climbing in the hills above the Columbia River I often stop to gaze down into the valley and try to imagine what it looked like before contact with the European cultures. Most people’s preconception of what the lower … Continue reading
“Sauvie” Island? Why not “Logie’s Island” or even “Wapato Island”?
Nowadays the island at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, is referred to as “Sauvie Island”, or sometimes “Sauvie’s Island” by the older residents. It’s a favorite spot for Portlanders to cycle, to hunt water fowl, or even … Continue reading
Lumberjack Legacies 3 – The unstoppable meets the impenetrable
When the first loggers arrived in Oregon they were daunted by the overwhelming vastness of the forests that they beheld. The pine forests of Maine and Minnesota had not withstood their onslaught, but here before them lay a swatch of … Continue reading
Posted in Logging history, Uncategorized
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Lumberjack Legacies 1 – Letting Light into the Swamp
In the words of one 19th century pundit, “You have to let daylight into the swamp before corn and potatoes can grow.” Through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Americans idolized loggers as symbols of the rambunctious American determinism … Continue reading
Posted in Logging history, Uncategorized
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When Bullwhackers reigned supreme
If you drive out of Portland headed north towards Scappoose and the Oregon side of the Lower Columbia, you are likely to travel along Yeon Avenue. The pronunciation of this road is usually a foolproof way to tell longtime Portland … Continue reading
Posted in Logging history, Uncategorized
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Forgotten corner of Oregon
Oregon’s Forgotten Corner. For those of you who actually read this blog on a regular basis, it may have become apparent that I am using this medium to assemble and present the first draft of a book about Oregon’s forgotten … Continue reading
Contagion – could it happen here? It did!
The recent movie “Contagion” depicts a world beset by a terrifying disease that threatens to unravel the world as we know it. The New Yorker review sums it up, “As panic engulfs the country, civil society dissolves. Crowds assault banks … Continue reading
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You may never appreciate a clear-cut, but…
You may never appreciate a clear-cut, but there is more to this practice than merely wanton violence perpetrated upon nature. For many people the sight of denuded hillsides is both depressing and incomprehensible. I won’t disagree, though I take a … Continue reading
Posted in Indian lore, Logging history, Uncategorized
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