Asahel Curtis was a photographer based in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. His career included documentation of the Klondike Gold Rush period in Seattle, natural landscapes in the Northwest, and infrastructure projects in Seattle
Asahel Curtis (1874–1941) was a photographer based in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. His career included documentation of the Klondike Gold Rush period in Seattle, natural landscapes in the Northwest, and infrastructure projects in Seattle.
Early life
Asahel Curtis was born in 1874 in Minnesota[1] to Johnson Asahel Curtis (1840–1887) and Ellen Sheriff (1844–1912). Johnson Curtis was a clergyman and American Civil War veteran who was born in Ohio to a father born in Canada and mother from Vermont. Ellen Sheriff was born in New York City,[2] and both of her parents were born in England. Asahel's siblings were Raphael Curtis (1862–c1885) aka Ray Curtis; Eva Curtis (May 10, 1870, Whittaker, WI-1967, Tacoma Co, WA); and Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868–1952), a photographer and ethnologist.
In 1880 the family was living in Cordova, Minnesota, part of Le Sueur County, and Johnson Curtis was working as a retail grocer. When Edward and Asahel were teenagers they had a homemade camera. In 1885 at the age of seventeen Edward took his interest in photography and became an apprentice photographer in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Career
When the Curtis family moved to Washington state in 1888, Edward and Asahel were just teenagers. As their careers grew, their choice of subjects became increasingly different. Edward spent 33 years documenting the traditional life of the Native American Indians. Asahel photographed Washington's natural resources and related industries, as well as the early cities of Washington state, historic events, and its population.
Asahel's brother, Edward Sheriff Curtis, supported the family by opening a photography studio in Seattle, and Asahel went to work for him in 1894. In 1897, the brothers agreed that Asahel should go to the Yukon and document the Klondike Gold Rush. Asahel remained there for two years, alternately taking pictures and working a small and largely unproductive claim. Asahel launched his photography career with that two year trip to Alaska and the Klondike. Charles Ainsworth, his mining partner, was among the many gold-seeking miners Asahel photographed between 1897 and 1899.
After working together for a few years, Edward and Asahel parted ways forever after a bitter disagreement over the rights to Asahel's Yukon photos, which Edward had published under his own name. From then on, the brothers traveled separate paths.
A 1908 parade in Seattle, tinted photograph by Asahel Curtis
Edward concentrated on securing funding for the North American Indian project through lectures and photograph showings. Edward later became nationally recognized for his twenty-volume series of photographs of Native Americans. Asahel also enjoyed a successful career as a photographer, although he did not receive the acclaim that Edward did. He married Florence Carney in 1902.
In 1911, Asahel established his own studio in Seattle and employed a team of developers and colorists, including his sister Eva. He was hired by a number of local companies, organizations, and wealthy individuals to take portraits and promotional photos. He became more widely known for his images of the Washington landscape that were published nationwide.
The Asahel Curtis Photo Company Photographs in the collection of the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection of 1,677 items provides one of the most valuable photographic records of Seattle, the state of Washington, Alaska, and the Klondike, covering a period from the 1850s until 1940.
Photo of Mount Rainier by Asahel Curtis, 1908
Curtis was a keen observer of people, places and events, Asahel documented the Washington timber, agriculture, fishing and mining industries. He photographed historic events such as presidential visits, the building of the dams on the Columbia River, and Seattle's ambitious Denny Regrade project.
Curtis appreciated the beauty and uniqueness of Mount Rainier so much that for several decades he directed his appreciation for scenic beauty and his efforts at regional boosterism and combined them into the development of Mount Rainier National Park. Curtis was a founding member of the Mountaineers, a mountain-climbing group which also promoted the preservation of wilderness areas. Curtis was active in the affairs of the club for the first several years after its founding in 1906. He led the Mountaineers on climbs up Mount Rainier and organized a committee within the club to deal with the Mount Rainier National Park. Curtis said:
One comes more intimately in touch with the mountains when he travels the trails. In the valleys the forests seem lower, the giant trees rise from one's side to tremendous heights and the lower growth reaches out a friendly hand to bid you welcome; but it is on the untrodden mountain heights that the traveler receives a true reward for his toil. Here where vegetation makes its last stand amid a world of ice and snow, with the lower world stretching away to the distant horizon, nature unfolds in all her beauty.
Curtis's involvement in the Seattle-Tacoma Rainier National Park Committee (later the Rainier National Park Advisory Board) strained his relations with the Mountaineers. The committee, which Curtis chaired from 1912 to 1936, was formed by community business interests to take advantage of the park's tourism potential. Curtis, through the committee, sought to promote greater accessibility to the park by building roads to increase tourism. His opposition to the expansion of the Olympic National Park in the late 1930s as a representative of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the timber industry, led to a further deterioration of relations with the Mountaineers. It also caused a rift between Curtis and his fellow Mount Rainier boosters and effectively ended his involvement in park affairs.
Curtis's advocacy was not limited to the development of Mount Rainier National Park. While serving as the official photographer for the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, he also chaired its Development Committee and its Highway Committee for years. His interests reached beyond the Puget Sound region. Curtis owned a small orchard in Ellensburg, and he believed that the productivity of Central Washington could be improved by building irrigation projects to turn the arid region into cropland. The Washington Irrigation Association thus chose Curtis to be its president in the 1920s. He also participated in the affairs of the Washington State Good Roads Association, serving as its president in 1932 and 1933.
Curtis worked in his Seattle studio until his death in 1941. Sixty thousand of his images are held in trust by the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma.
Panoramic view of Seattle in 1902, stitched from six Asahel Curtis photographs
Legacy
The Upper and Lower Curtis Glaciers on Mount Shuksan in North Cascades National Park were named for Curtis, who made an early ascent of the mountain in 1906.[3] The Asahel Curtis Trail is located in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, near the heavily travelled Snoqualmie Pass along Interstate 90.
See also
Theodore Peiser
The Pacific Northwest (PNW), sometimes referred to as Cascadia, is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Some broader conceptions reach north into Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, and east into western Montana. Other conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Cascade and Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the region's history, culture, geography, society, ecosystems, and other factors.[citation needed]
The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, and the Northwest Plateau (also commonly known as "the Interior" in British Columbia),[1] is the inland region. The term "Pacific Northwest" should not be confused with the Northwest Territory (also known as the Great Northwest, a historical term in the United States) or the Northwest Territories of Canada. The region is sometimes referred to as Cascadia, which, depending on the borders, may or may not be the same thing as the Pacific Northwest.
The region's largest metropolitan areas are Greater Seattle, Washington, with 4 million people;[2] Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, with 2.84 million people;[3] and Greater Portland, Oregon, with 2.5 million people.[4]
The culture of the Pacific Northwest is influenced by the Canada–United States border, which the United States and the United Kingdom established at a time when the region's inhabitants were composed mostly of indigenous peoples. Two sections of the border—one along the 49th parallel south of British Columbia and one between the Alaska Panhandle and northern British Columbia—have left a great impact on the region. According to Canadian historian Ken Coates, the border has not merely influenced the Pacific Northwest—rather, "the region's history and character have been determined by the boundary".[5]
Definition
None of the multiple possible definitions of the Pacific Northwest is universally accepted. This map shows three possibilities: (1) The shaded area shows the historical Oregon Country. (2) The green line shows the Cascadia bioregion.[6] (3) The labeled states and provinces include Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia.
Definitions of the "Pacific Northwest" region vary, and even Pacific Northwesterners do not agree on the exact boundary.[7][8] The most common conception includes the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and sometimes the Canadian province of British Columbia.[5]
Broader definitions of the region have included the U.S. states of Alaska and parts of the states of California, Montana, and Wyoming, and the Canadian territory of Yukon.[5][9][10]
Definitions based on the historic Oregon Country reach east to the Continental Divide, thus including all of western Montana and western Wyoming. Sometimes, the Pacific Northwest is defined as being the Northwestern United States specifically, excluding Canada.
History
Indigenous peoples
See also: Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau
The Pacific Northwest has been occupied by a diverse array of indigenous peoples for millennia. The Pacific Coast is seen by some scholars as a major coastal migration route in the settlement of the Americas by late Pleistocene peoples moving from northeast Asia into the Americas.[11]
The coastal migration hypothesis has been bolstered by findings such as the report that the sediments in the Port Eliza Cave[12] on Vancouver Island indicate the possibility of survivable climate as far back as 16 kya (16,000 years ago) in the area, while the continental ice sheets were nearing their maximum extent.[13] Other evidence for human occupation dating back as much as 14.5 kya (14,500 years ago) is emerging from Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon.[14][15] However, despite such research, the coastal migration hypothesis is still subject to considerable debate.[16][17]
Due in part to the richness of Pacific Northwest Coast and river fisheries, some of the indigenous peoples developed complex sedentary societies, while remaining hunter-gatherers.[18] The Pacific Northwest Coast is one of the few places where politically complex hunter-gatherers evolved and survived to historic contacts, and therefore has been vital for anthropologists and archaeologists seeking to understand how complex hunter and gatherer societies function.[19] When Europeans first arrived on the Northwest Coast, they found one of the world's most complex hunting and fishing societies, with large sedentary villages, large houses, systems of social rank and prestige, extensive trade networks, and many other factors more commonly associated with societies based on domesticated agriculture.[19][20] In the interior of the Pacific Northwest, the indigenous peoples, at the time of European contact, had a diversity of cultures and societies. Some areas were home to mobile and egalitarian societies. Others, especially along major rivers such as the Columbia and Fraser, had very complex, affluent, sedentary societies rivaling those of the coast.[21]
In British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, the Haida and Tlingit erected large and elaborately carved totem poles that have become iconic of Pacific Northwest artistic traditions. Throughout the Pacific Northwest, thousands of indigenous people live, and some continue to practice their rich cultural traditions, "organizing their societies around cedar and salmon".[22]
Initial European exploration
Main article: History of the west coast of North America
In 1579, the British captain and erstwhile privateer Francis Drake sailed up the west coast of North America perhaps as far as Oregon before returning south to land and make ship repairs. On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbor to repair his ailing ship.[23][24][25][26][27][excessive citations] On June 17, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California.[28][26] While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion.[29] Juan de Fuca, a Greek captain sailing for the Crown of Spain, supposedly found the Strait of Juan de Fuca around 1592. The strait was named for him, but whether he discovered it or not has long been questioned.[30] During the early 1740s, Imperial Russia sent the Dane Vitus Bering to the region.[31] By the late 18th century and into the mid-19th century, Russian settlers had established several posts and communities on the northeast Pacific coast, eventually reaching as far south as Fort Ross, California. The Russian River was named after these settlements.
In 1774, the viceroy of New Spain sent Spanish navigator Juan Pérez in the ship Santiago to the Pacific Northwest. Peréz made landfall on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) on July 18, 1774. The northernmost latitude he reached was 54°40′ N.[32] This was followed, in 1775, by another Spanish expedition, under the command of Bruno de Heceta and including Juan Peréz and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra as officers. On July 14, 1775, they landed on the Olympic Peninsula near the mouth of the Quinault River. On August 17, 1775, Heceta, returning south, sighted the mouth of the Columbia River and named it Bahia de la Asunción. While Heceta sailed south, Quadra continued north in the expedition's second ship, Sonora, reaching Alaska, at 59° N.[33] In 1778 English mariner Captain James Cook visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and also voyaged as far as Prince William Sound.
In 1779, a third Spanish expedition, under the command of Ignacio de Artega in the ship Princesa, and with Quadra as captain of the ship Favorite, sailed from Mexico to the coast of Alaska, reaching 61° N. Two further Spanish expeditions, in 1788 and 1789, both under Esteban Jose Martínez and Gonzalo López de Haro, sailed to the Pacific Northwest. During the second expedition, they met the American captain Robert Gray near Nootka Sound. Upon entering Nootka Sound, they found William Douglas and his ship Iphigenia. Conflict led to the Nootka Crisis, which was resolved by agreements known as the Nootka Convention. In 1790, the Spanish sent three ships to Nootka Sound, under the command of Francisco de Eliza. After establishing a base at Nootka, Eliza sent out several exploration parties. Salvador Fidalgo was sent north to the Alaska coast. Manuel Quimper, with Gonzalo López de Haro as pilot, explored the Strait of Juan de Fuca, discovering the San Juan Islands and Admiralty Inlet in the process. Francisco de Eliza himself took the ship San Carlos into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From a base at Port Discovery, his pilotos (masters) José María Narváez and Juan Carrasco explored the San Juan Islands, Haro Strait, Rosario Strait, and Bellingham Bay. In the process, they discovered the Strait of Georgia and explored it as far north as Texada Island. The expedition returned to Nootka Sound by August 1791. Alessandro Malaspina, sailing for Spain, explored and mapped the coast from Yakutat Bay to Prince William Sound in 1791, then sailed to Nootka Sound. Performing a scientific expedition in the manner of James Cook, Malaspina's scientists studied the Tlingit and Nuu-chah-nulth peoples before returning to Mexico. Another Spanish explorer, Jacinto Caamaño, sailed the ship Aranzazu to Nootka Sound in May 1792. There he met Quadra, who was in command of the Spanish settlement and Fort San Miguel. Quadra sent Caamaño north, to carefully explore the coast between Vancouver Island and Bucareli Bay, Alaska. Various Spanish maps, including Caamaño's, were given to George Vancouver in 1792, as the Spanish and British worked together to chart the complex coastline.[33]
HMS Discovery was the lead ship used by George Vancouver
From 1792 to 1794, George Vancouver charted the Pacific Northwest on behalf of Great Britain, including the Strait of Georgia, the bays and inlets of Puget Sound, and the Johnstone Strait–Queen Charlotte Strait and much of the rest of the British Columbia Coast and southeast Alaska shorelines.[32] For him the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island are named, as well as Vancouver, Washington. From Mexico, Malaspina dispatched the last Spanish exploration expedition in the Pacific Northwest, under Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayentano Valdes aboard the schooners Sutil and Mexicana.[34] They met Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia on June 21, 1792. Vancouver had explored Puget Sound just previously. The Spanish explorers knew of Admiralty Inlet and the unexplored region to the south, but they decided to sail north. They discovered and entered the Fraser River shortly before meeting Vancouver. After sharing maps and agreeing to cooperate, Galiano, Valdés, and Vancouver sailed north to Desolation Sound and the Discovery Islands, charting the coastline together. They passed through Johnstone Strait and Cordero Channel and returned to Nootka Sound. As a result, the Spanish explorers, who had set out from Nootka, became the first Europeans to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. Vancouver himself had entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca directly without going to Nootka first, so had not sailed completely around the island.[33]
In 1786, Jean-François de La Pérouse, representing France, sailed to Haida Gwaii after visiting Nootka Sound, but any possible French claims to this region were lost when La Pérouse and his men and journals were lost in a shipwreck near Australia. Upon encountering the Salish coastal tribes, either Pérouse or someone in his crew remarked, "What must astonish most is to see painting everywhere, everywhere sculpture, among a nation of hunters".[35] Maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley also visited the area in Imperial Eagle, a British ship falsely flying the flag of the Austrian Empire. American merchant sea-captain Robert Gray traded along the coast, and discovered the mouth of the Columbia River.
Continental crossover exploration
Explorer Alexander Mackenzie completed in 1793 the first continental crossing in what is called today central British Columbia and reached the Pacific Ocean. Simon Fraser explored and mapped the Fraser River from Central British Columbia down to its mouth in 1808. And mapmaker David Thompson explored in 1811 the entire route of the Columbia River from its northern headwaters all the way to its mouth. These explorations were commissioned by the North West Company and were all undertaken with small teams of Voyageurs.
United States President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition to travel through the Midwest starting from St. Louis, cross the Continental Divide and reach the Columbia River up to its mouth. Americans reached the Pacific Ocean "overland" in 1805. The Pacific Fur Company sent in 1811 an "over-lander" crew including a large contingent of Voyageurs to retrace most of the path of the earlier expedition up to the mouth of the Columbia and join the company ship. The Tonquin came oversea via Cape Horn to build and operate Fort Astoria.
These early land expeditions mapped the way for subsequent land explorations and building early settlements.
Subsequent land explorations
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The Willamette River was the first PNW inland waterway to be explored north–south during trapping expeditions carried out throughout the 1810s by the Pacific Fur Company soon acquired by the North West Company (NWC). During the 1820s, the upper Willamette, the Umpqua, the Rogue, the Klamath were all reached still heading southward up toward the Sacramento River and California under the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) having now itself acquired the NWC. The Siskiyou Trail was gradually being established by Alexander Roderick McLeod and Peter Skene Ogden leading related expeditions for the HBC.
Also during the 1820s, HBC explorations were carried out northward originating from the Columbia River Fort Astoria long renamed to Fort George. Simon Plamondon first ventured during the early 20s into the Cowlitz River up to Cowlitz Prairie. By 1824, an expedition led by James McMillan was reaching Puget Sound via the Chehalis River (Washington) and a portage. The same expedition went on all the way to Boundary Bay and reached the Fraser River via the Nicomekl and the Salmon linked via a portage. The lower Fraser was revisited 16 years after explorer Simon Fraser (NWC) had first reached its mouth, although originating from northern present-day British Columbia. Puget Sound soon after would get reached via the Cowlitz and the Cowlitz Landing portage, but originating from new HBC headquarter Fort Vancouver located closer by, North of the Columbia.
Early settlements
New Archangel (present-day Sitka, Alaska), the capital of Russian America
Noteworthy Russian settlements still in place include: Unalaska (1774), Kodiak (1791), and Sitka (1804) making them the oldest permanent non-Indigenous settlements in the Pacific Northwest. Temporary Spanish settlement Santa Cruz de Nuca (1789–1795) held on a few years at Nootka Sound.
Other early occupation non-Indigenous settlements of interest, either long lasting or still in place, built and operated by either the North West Company, the Pacific Fur Company or the Hudson's Bay Company include: Fort Saint-James (1806; oldest in British Columbia west of the Rockies), Fort Astoria (1811; oldest in Oregon), Fort Nez Percés (1818), Fort Alexandria (1821), Fort Vancouver (1824), Fort Langley (1827; oldest in southern British Columbia), Fort Nisqually (1833), and Fort Victoria (1843).
Also of interest are the first mixed ancestry settlements sometimes referred as Métis settlements or French Canadian settlements. Native and newly arrived "half-breeds" (born out of "Europeans" and Indigenous alliances), local and newly arrived Indigenous people as well as "French Canadians" all issued of the fur trade were all able to peacefully coexist. Small scale farming occurred. Catholic missions and churches thrived for many years. These first settlements were: French Prairie, Frenchtown near Walla Walla, Cowlitz Prairie (Washington), French Settlement (Oregon) and Frenchtown near Missoula. Most mixed ancestry people ended up resettled in or around Indigenous reserves during the subsequent period, or otherwise assimilating in the mainstream.[36]
Boundary disputes
U.S. Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes' 1841 Map of the Oregon Territory from "Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition". Philadelphia: 1845
Initial formal claims to the region were asserted by Spain in 1513 with explorer Nuñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean from the Americas. Russian maritime fur trade activity, through the Russian-American Company, extended from the farther side of the Pacific to Russian America. This prompted Spain to send expeditions north to assert Spanish ownership, while Captain James Cook and subsequent expeditions by George Vancouver advanced British claims. As of the Nootka Sound Conventions, the last in 1794, Spain gave up its exclusive a priori claims and agreed to share the region with the other powers, giving up its garrison at Nootka Sound in the process.
The United States established a claim based on the discoveries of Robert Gray, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the construction of Fort Astoria, and the acquisition of Spanish claims given to the United States in the Adams–Onís Treaty.[37] From the 1810s until the 1840s, modern-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, along with most of British Columbia, were part of what the United States called the Oregon Country and Britain called the Columbia District. This region was jointly claimed by the United States and Great Britain after the Treaty of 1818, which established a co-dominion of interests in the region in lieu of a settlement. In 1840, American Charles Wilkes explored in the area. John McLoughlin, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, headquartered at Fort Vancouver, was the de facto local political authority for most of this time.
This arrangement ended as U.S. settlement grew and President James K. Polk was elected on a platform of calling for annexation of the entire Oregon Country and of Texas. After his election, supporters coined the famous slogan "Fifty-four Forty or Fight", referring to 54°40′ north latitude—the northward limit of the United States' claim.[38] After a war scare with the United Kingdom, the Oregon boundary dispute was settled in the 1846 Oregon Treaty, partitioning the region along the 49th parallel and resolving most, but not all, of the border disputes (see Pig War).
The mainland territory north of the 49th parallel remained unincorporated until 1858, when a mass influx of Americans and others during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush forced the hand of Colony of Vancouver Island's Governor James Douglas, who declared the mainland a Crown colony. The two colonies were amalgamated in 1866 to cut costs, and joined the Dominion of Canada in 1871. The U.S. portion became the Oregon Territory in 1848. It was later subdivided into Oregon Territory and Washington Territory. These territories became the states of Oregon, Idaho, Washington and parts of other Western states.
During the American Civil War, British Columbia officials pushed for London to invade and conquer the Washington Territory in effort to take advantage of Americans being distracted in the war on the Eastern region. This was rejected, as the UK did not wish to risk war with the United States, whose forces were better prepared and trained much more than the British troops.[39]
American expansionist pressure on British Columbia persisted after the colony became a province of Canada, even though Americans living in the province did not harbor annexationist inclinations. The Fenian Brotherhood openly organized and drilled in Washington, particularly in the 1870s and the 1880s, though no cross-border attacks were experienced. During the Alaska Boundary Dispute, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to invade and annex British Columbia if Britain would not yield on the question of the Yukon ports. In more recent times, during the so-called "Salmon War" of the 1990s, Washington Senator Slade Gorton called for the U.S. Navy to "force" the Inside Passage, even though it is not an official international waterway. Disputes between British Columbia and Alaska over the Dixon Entrance of the Hecate Strait between Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii have not been resolved.[40]
Geology
Further information: Geology of the Pacific Northwest
The Northwest is still highly geologically active, with both active volcanoes and geologic faults.[41]
The last known great earthquake in the northwest was the 1700 Cascadia earthquake.[42] The geological record reveals that "great earthquakes" (those with moment magnitude 8 or higher) occur in the Cascadia subduction zone about every 500 years on average, often accompanied by tsunamis. There is evidence of at least 13 events at intervals from about 300 to 900 years.[43]
Active volcanoes in the region include Mount Garibaldi, Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Hood, Mount Meager, Mount Jefferson, Mount Shasta, Lassen Peak and Glacier Peak.
Geography
Mount Rainier (top) and Mount Hood (bottom) are the highest mountains in Washington and Oregon, and the 3rd and 20th most prominent summits in the United States, respectively.
The Pacific Northwest is a diverse geographic region, dominated by several mountain ranges, including the Coast Mountains, the Cascade Range, the Olympic Mountains, the Columbia Mountains, and the Rocky Mountains. The highest peak in the Pacific Northwest is Mount Rainier, in the Washington Cascades, at 14,410 feet (4,392 m). Immediately inland from the Cascade Range are broad, generally dry plateaus. In the US, this region is known as the Columbia Plateau, while in British Columbia, it is the Interior Plateau, also called the Fraser Plateau. The Columbia Plateau was the scene of massive ice-age floods, and as a consequence, there are many coulees, canyons, and the Channeled Scablands. Much of the plateau, especially in eastern Washington, is irrigated farmland.[44] The Columbia River cuts a deep and wide gorge around the rim of the Columbia Plateau and through the Cascade Range on its way to the Pacific Ocean.
Because many areas have plentiful rainfall and mild summers, the Pacific Northwest has some of North America's most lush and extensive forests, which are extensively populated with Coast Douglas fir trees, the second tallest growing evergreen conifer on earth. The region also contains specimens of the tallest trees on earth, the coast redwoods, in southwestern Oregon, but the largest of these trees are located just south of the California border in northwestern California. Coastal forests in some areas are classified as temperate rain forest.
Coastal features are defined by the interaction with the Pacific and the North American continent. The coastline of the Pacific Northwest is dotted by numerous fjords, bays, islands, and mountains. Some of these features include the Oregon Coast, Burrard Inlet, Puget Sound, and the highly complex fjords of the British Columbia Coast and Southeast Alaska. The region has one of the world's longest fjord coastlines.[45]
The Pacific Northwest contains an uncountable number of islands, many of the smaller ones being unnamed. The vast majority of such islands are in British Columbia and Alaska. Vancouver Island is by far the largest island in the area, but other significant land masses include the Haida Gwaii, vast and remote Princess Royal Island, Prince of Wales Island and Chichagof Island. The Salish Sea located close to major populated areas contains smaller but more frequently visited and well known islands. These include Whidbey Island, Salt Spring Island, and Texada Island, along with dozens of smaller islands in the San Juan and Gulf Island chains.
The major cities of Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma all began as seaports supporting the logging, mining, and farming industries of the region, but have developed into major technological and industrial centers (such as the Silicon Forest), which benefit from their location on the Pacific Rim.
If defined as British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, the Pacific Northwest has four US National Parks: Crater Lake in Oregon, and Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades in Washington. If a larger regional definition is used, then other US National Parks might be included, such as Redwood National and State Parks, Glacier Bay National Park, Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and parts of Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. There are several Canadian National Parks in the Pacific Northwest, including Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Mount Revelstoke National Park and Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Range alongside Rogers Pass, Kootenay National Park and Yoho National Park on the British Columbia flank of the Rockies, Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in Haida Gwaii, and the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve in the Strait of Georgia. There are numerous protected areas in British Columbia and in the United States.
Other outstanding natural features include the Columbia River Gorge, Fraser Canyon, Mount St. Helens, Malaspina Glacier, and Hells Canyon. The south-central Coast Mountains in British Columbia contain the five largest mid-latitude icefields in the world.
Climate
The main general climatic types of the Pacific Northwest are temperate; cool temperatures and frequent cloudy skies are typical. Under the Köppen climate classification, a warm-summer Mediterranean (Csb) designation is assigned to many areas of the Pacific Northwest as far north as central Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, including cities such as Victoria, Vancouver (coast area), Seattle, and Portland.[46] Other climate classification systems, such as Trewartha, place these areas in the oceanic zone (Do).[47] An Alpine climate dominates in the high mountains. Semi-arid and arid climates are found east of the higher mountains, especially in rainshadow areas. The Harney Basin of Oregon is an example of arid climate in the Pacific Northwest. Humid continental climates occur inland on windward sides, in places such as Revelstoke, British Columbia. A subarctic climate can be found farther north, especially in Yukon and Alaska.[48]
The lack of rain in the hot season is associated with high atmospheric pressure. The shadows of the mountains also greatly decrease the amount of precipitation. West of the Cascades, the marine climates have a much greater precipitation than the west coast of Europe due to orographic lift, with some regions seeing as much as 3,500 mm (138 in) of precipitation per year. Winters are very mild for the region's latitude. The growth of Arbutus, an evergreen broad-leafed tree, is possible on Vancouver Island due to the mild winters.[49][50][51][52][53][54]
The Big Dark
The Big Dark is a term for winter in the Pacific Northwest. At a latitude of almost 48 degrees north, Seattle has sunsets before 6 PM between October and March, and fewer than eight hours of daylight for many weeks around the winter solstice.[55][56] The darkness contributes to seasonal affective disorder among people living in northern cities, including those in the Puget Sound region.[57][58][59] The darkness is enhanced by a return from dry summers to extremely cloudy and wet weather characterized by recurring atmospheric rivers and Pacific Northwest windstorms.[55][60]
Ecoregions
The Cascades range
Much of the Pacific Northwest is forested. The Georgia Strait–Puget Sound basin is shared between western British Columbia and Washington, and the Pacific temperate rain forests ecoregion, which is the largest of the world's temperate rain forest ecoregions in the system created by the World Wildlife Fund, stretches along the coast from Alaska to California. The dry desert inland from the Cascade Range and Coast Mountains is very different from the terrain and climate of the coastal area due to the rain shadow effect of the mountains, and comprises the Columbia, Fraser and Thompson Plateaus and mountain ranges contained within them. The interior regions' climates largely within Eastern Washington, south central British Columbia, Eastern Oregon, and southern Idaho are a part of the Great Basin Desert, although by their northern and eastern reaches, dry land and desert areas verge at the end of the Cascades' and Coast Mountains' rain shadows with the boreal forest and various alpine flora regimes characteristic of eastern British Columbia, the Idaho Panhandle and western Montana roughly along a longitudinal line defined by the Idaho border with Washington and Oregon. The North American inland temperate rainforest is in the so-called interior wet-belt, approximately 500–700 km inland from the pacific coast on western, windward mountain slopes and valley bottoms of the Columbia Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. The interior wet-belt refers to a discontinuous band of humid forest patches, that are scattered over 1000 km between Purden Lake in Canada’s British Columbia (54° North) and Montana and Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains and Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains (45° North).[61] It is closely associated with the North Central Rockies forests ecoregion designated by the WWF, which extends over a similar range but incorporates various non-temperate rainforest ecosystems.
Demographics
Population
Map of "megacity", showing population density (shades of yellow/brown), highways (red), and major railways (black). Public land shown in shades of green.
The overwhelming majority of the population of the Pacific Northwest is concentrated in the Portland–Seattle–Vancouver corridor. As of 2016, the combined populations of the Lower Mainland region (which includes the Metro Vancouver Regional District), the Seattle metropolitan area, and the Portland metropolitan area totaled more than nine million people.[62][63][64] However, beyond these three cities, the PNW region is characterized by a very low density population distribution. Some other regions of greater population density outside this corridor include the Greater Victoria area and Greater Nanaimo area on Southern Vancouver Island (with a population of approximately 530,000),[65][66] the Okanagan Valley in the British Columbia interior (about 350,000 people centered around the city of Kelowna, which has close to 200,000 people). Large geographical areas may only have one mid-sized to small-sized city as a regional center (often a county seat), with smaller cities and towns scattered around. Vast areas of the region may have little or no population at all, largely due to the presence of extensive mountains and forests, and plateaus containing both extensive farm and range lands, much of which is protected from development in large parks and preserves, or by zoning use regulation related to traditional land use. For example, all cities within the portion of California which are sometimes included some definitions of the "Pacific Northwest" have populations less than 100,000, with that portion of the state containing millions of acres of national forests and parks.
List of largest cities by population in the Pacific Northwest
City State/Province Population Metropolitan area Urban area
Seattle Washington 704,000[67] 3,905,026[68] 3,059,393[69]
Portland Oregon 658,347[68] 2,753,168[68] 1,849,898[69]
Vancouver British Columbia 631,486[70] 2,737,698[3] 2,264,823[71]
Surrey British Columbia 598,530[70] [a] [a]
Burnaby British Columbia 257,926[70] [a] [a]
Boise Idaho 236,634[72] 691,423[68] 349,684[69]
Spokane Washington 222,081[67] 573,493 [73][74] 486,225[69]
Richmond British Columbia 216,046[70] [a] [a]
Tacoma Washington 198,397[67] [b] [b]
Vancouver Washington 175,673[67] [c] [c]
Salem Oregon 169,798[75] 390,738[68] 236,632[69]
Eugene Oregon 168,916[75] 351,715[68] 247,421[69]
Abbotsford British Columbia 161,581[70] 204,265[3] 121,279[71]
Coquitlam British Columbia 152,734[70] [a] [a]
Bellevue Washington 148,164[76] [b] [b]
Kelowna British Columbia 146,127[70] 222,748[3] 151,957[71]
Redmond Washington 136,420[76] [b] [b]
Langley (Township) British Columbia 133,302[70] [a] [a]
Kent Washington 125,560[67] [b] [b]
Saanich British Columbia 125,107[70] [d] [d]
Delta British Columbia 111,281[70] [a] [a]
Gresham Oregon 111,063[75] [c] [c]
Hillsboro Oregon 106,894[75] [c] [c]
Meridian Idaho 106,000[77] [e] [e]
Everett Washington 103,019[67] [b] [b]
Nanaimo British Columbia 101,336[70] 117,144[3] 88,799[71]
Kamloops British Columbia 101,198[70] 116,896[3] 78,026[71]
Beaverton Oregon 97,514[75] [c] [c]
Renton Washington 95,448[67] [b] [b]
Spokane Valley Washington 94,919[67] [f] [f]
Chilliwack British Columbia 95,178[70] 116,626[3] 73,161[71]
Bend Oregon 94,520[78] 170,705 83,794[69]
Victoria British Columbia 94,415[70] 408,883[3] 335,696[71]
Nampa Idaho 93,590[79] [e] [e]
Kirkland Washington 93,010[76] [b] [b]
Maple Ridge British Columbia 91,479[70] [a] [a]
Bellingham Washington 92,314[67] 201,140[80] 114,473[69]
Yakima Washington 91,067[81] 243,231[81] 129,534[69]
North Vancouver (District) British Columbia 89,767[70] [a] [a]
Federal Way Washington 89,306[67] [b] [b]
Kennewick Washington 84,347[76] 268,200 232,954[69]
New Westminster British Columbia 82,590[70] [a] [a]
Prince George British Columbia 82,290[70] 96,015[3] 65,510[71]
Missoula Montana 76,784 117,922
Medford Oregon 74,907[78] 207,010 154,081[69]
Ethnicity
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In British Columbia, Europeans form 64% of the population with Asians comprising a further 29% of the provincial population. Both the Asian and European populations of the province are diverse; of the Asian population, 15% of the population is of East Asian descent, 8% of the population is of South Asian descent, with smaller numbers of Southeast Asians (4%) and West Asians (2%); the European population contains large communities of English Canadians, Scottish Canadians, Irish Canadians, French Canadians, German Canadians, and many others.[82] Europeans form between 80 and 90 per cent of the population in U.S. section of the Pacific Northwest, thus the Asian presence is comparably smaller, with all Asian groups together comprising about 8% of Washington state's population, and less than 4% in Oregon and Idaho. This is due to immigration quotas at the federal level, as while Canada has one-tenth the population of the United States, it takes in one-quarter as many immigrants, many of whom are from Asia. Vancouver settled about a quarter of all emigrants from Hong Kong to Canada in the late 1980s.[83]
In the U.S. side of the region, Latinos make up a large portion of the agricultural labor force east of the Cascade Range, and are an increasing presence in the general labor force west of the Cascades. Despite the Second Great Migration from the 1940s to 1960s due to the booming Boeing war industry and post-war growing economy, African Americans are less numerous in the Pacific Northwest; however, the overall African American population has been growing in other smaller urban areas throughout the region such as Eugene.[84] African Americans tend to concentrate in western urban areas such as Tacoma, south Seattle, and Portland. Nonetheless, Black people have a very large presence in Tacoma's Hilltop and South Tacoma neighborhoods, Seattle's Central District and Rainier Valley neighborhoods,[85] and in Portland's Northeast Quadrant.[86] There are growing numbers in Vancouver as well, particularly Africans, Jamaicans and Black people from the United States.
Beginning in the late 20th century, a general suburbanization of East and South Asian communities occurred in Vancouver, prompting concerns regarding the preservation of historical inner-city communities particularly in Chinatown and Punjabi Market.
African Americans have held the positions of Mayor in Seattle; King County executive, while the state of Washington elected a Chinese American governor during the 1990s, Gary Locke.
British Columbians of many ethnicities are prominent in all levels of politics and government, and the province has a number of "firsts" in Canadian political history, including the first non-white and Asian Premier, Ujjal Dosanjh (who is Indo-Canadian) and the first Asian Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon. David Lam. The Lieutenant-Governor from 2007 to 2012, Steven Point, was of aboriginal origin, being Stó:lō (the dominant type of Coast Salish in BC's Lower Mainland) from the Chilliwack area. The leader of the opposition party from 2005 to 2011, the NDP, was Carole James, of partial Métis origin. Colonial governor James Douglas was himself mulatto of Guyanese extraction and his wife was of Cree origin.
Oregon has been a national leader concerning LGBT representation in government. At the time of his election to the office of Portland mayor in 2008, Sam Adams was the first openly gay individual to represent a city of Portland's size in the United States. In Silverton, Oregon, the same year, Stu Rasmussen was elected the first transgender mayor in U.S. history. The first two LGBT state supreme court justices in the country both sit on the Oregon Supreme Court. Governor of Oregon Kate Brown is the highest-ranking openly bisexual politician in the United States. In 2017, Jenny Durkan was elected as the first openly lesbian mayor of Seattle.
Language
Most Americans and Canadians consider the Pacific Northwest English accent "neutral", though distinct from the Midwestern dialects that some believe typify American speech.[87][88][89] It possess the low back vowel merger, or the cot–caught merger. Canadian raising occurs in British Columbia and some speakers in Washington to a similar degree as it does in southern Ontario, but weaker than other parts of Canada. The California Vowel Shift also affects speech in the region.
Chinook Jargon was a pidgin or trade language established among indigenous inhabitants of the region. After contact with Europeans, French, English, and Cree words entered the language, and "eventually, Chinook became the lingua franca for as many as 250,000 people along the Pacific Slope from Alaska to Oregon".[90] Chinook Jargon reached its height of usage in the 19th century, though remained common in resource and wilderness areas, particularly, but not exclusively, by Native Americans and Canadian First Nations people, well into the 20th century. Today, its influence is felt mostly in place names and a handful of localized slang terms, particularly the word skookum, which remains hallmark of people raised in the region.
French was the voyageurs' working language of the early continental crossover exploration crews. The ensuing fur trade was dominated by French Canadian (and Métis) workers. The language held on South of the border in a few early settlements such as French Prairie, Frenchtown (Washington), Frenchtown (Montana), Cowlitz Prairie, and French Settlement. These early settlements got resupplied through waves of new arrivals from the Oregon Trail attracted by the language and Catholics communities. Much of it ended up assimilating to the melting pot or sometimes folding into reservations. New waves of French speaking workers came in later on to work in forestry and wood mills such as Maillardville in the greater Vancouver area. French remains much used in place names, in the documentation of products intended for North America (along with Spanish and English), as well as an official language in Canada. French schooling is also popular in Western Canada, including British Columbia.
Besides English and indigenous languages, Chinese has been common since the gold rushes of the mid-19th century, most particularly in British Columbia. Since the 1980s the Toishan, a Yue dialect predominant in the area, has been replaced by mainstream Cantonese and by Mandarin because of large-scale immigration from Asia. Punjabi is also common in British Columbia, specifically in Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley owing to the large Punjabi Sikh population in the region, first arriving in the late 19th century.[91] Spanish is also spoken in parts of Oregon and Washington as well as British Columbia by Mexicans and other Hispanics, both recent immigrants and long-standing communities.
Spirituality and religion
Religion in the Pacific Northwest
Religion British Columbia (2021)[92] Washington (2014 est.)[93] Oregon (2014 est.)[94] Idaho (2014 est.)[95]
Affiliation % of population
Christian 34
61
61
67
Protestant 10
40
43
37
Catholic 12
17
12
10
Mormon <1 3
4
19
Jehovah's Witnesses 1
2
<1 <1
Orthodox 1
<1 1
1
Other Christian/Not Specified 11
1
1
<1
Unaffiliated 52
33
32
28
Non-Christian 14
6
7
4
Sikh 6
<1 <1 <1
Muslim 3
<1 1
1
Buddhist 2
1
<1 <1
Hindu 2
1
<1 <1
Jewish 1
1
2
<1
Other faith 1
3
4
2
Total
The Pacific Northwest has the lowest rate of church attendance in the United States and consistently reports the highest percentage of atheism;[96][97] this is most pronounced on the part of the region west of the Cascades.[98] A recent study indicates that one quarter of those in Washington and Oregon have no religion.[99] Similarly, according to the 2011 Nation