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LONG GIFT INSCRIPTION FROM THE AUTHOR on the front free endpaper hand lettered in the shape of a Maltese cross which begins as follows: "Through the kindness of our friends Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Smith, the author is privileged to autograph this little book which represents our attempt to portray something of the grandeur and the wonderful beauty of the gorge of the Columbia--where the hand of God wrought so mightily when he lifted up these mountains out of the sea and parted the lofty Cascade Range as a man would part a curtain cleaving these mountains from top to bottom. Christmas Samuel C. Lancaster 1917 Portland, Oregon." [Original copyright 1915] 4to. (27p.) 144p. Profusely (!!) illustrated with full color and black and white captioned photos and drawings, plus a Photographic Reproduction of Plaster Cast Part of Mt. Hood Quadrangle and a three-panel fold out four-color reproduction of panorama painting by Fred H. Routledge of Portland, Oregon which also shows the Columbia defile to the east. Grey cloth blocked in white with white letters on the front cover and the spine and with an elaborate vignette on the front cover in green, black and white of the concrete bridge at Latourell Falls. Just touches of wear to extremities, spine very slightly faded, all illustrations in fine condition, fold out panorama in fine condition, else near fine to fine with no internal markings. No dust jacket. A 'must have" for any collector of books on the Columbia River. Samuel Christopher Lancaster was the engineer for the Columbia River Highway; he also worked on national park projects including the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and was a consulting engineer for Zion National Park. He also designed the Linfield College campus. I believe the Mr. C. A. Smith is Charles Axel Smith, who, according to an article entitled "The Coastal Lumber Industry", left an indelible mark on the landscape and communities around Coos Bay. Born in 1852 in Östergötland, Sweden, Smith had immigrated to the United States in 1867 and settled in Minneapolis. As a student at the University of Minnesota (or, as another story has it, as a hardware store clerk), he met John S. Pillsbury, governor of Minnesota and a member of the well-known flour-milling family. Pillsbury became Smith's mentor and eventually his business partner. Smith made several discreet trips to the West Coast in search of timber. To keep competitors from divining his intentions, he traveled incognito and worked through anonymous agents who scouted the region for the richest stands. In this way he acquired thousands of acres of Douglas fir and redwood, some of it by illegal means. He also picked up thirty thousand acres of timberland from E.B. Dean and Co., along with their logging railroads and Marshfield mill facilities. In 1907, Smith built a state-of-the-art sawmill on the tide flats of the upper bay and brought in Scandinavian workers-Swedish and Finnish millwrights, machinists, blacksmiths, mechanics, sawyers, edgers, trimmers, planers, greenchain-pullers, and water boys-to build and operate his Big Mill, as it came to be called. With his Oregon partner Albert Powers, Smith operated seven logging camps along the wooded tributaries to Coos Bay. By 1920, about half the loggers and sawmill workers on Coos Bay worked for him." I think Lancaster's inscription was a bit of lobbying for preservation of the Columbia River region. Two years later Stephen Mather came to the west coast to energize local conservation efforts including that of the Columbia River, and the timber industry was lobbied.
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