Category Archives: History

FISH HATCHERY – TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR LOST GROUND

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Chinook salmon circling about in a lower holding pond at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery.
Chinook salmon circling about in a lower holding pond at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery.

In the western United States, when something good gets discovered, it seems nothing better to do than to rush to deplete the good – gold, trees, … salmon.  Gold is mined many times at the cost of whatever lived in the area before.  Trees, centuries of age, swept away, sometimes replanted, sometimes not, always with ecological cost.  In the case of salmon, former runs of billions of salmon first suffered from overfishing, taken to extremes.  To finish off the magnificent earlier runs, primeval rivers dammed ending the prehistoric runs.  Fish hatchery to the rescue

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BUILD UP TO SHILOH – “WATER OUR HORSES IN THE TENNESSEE”

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Federal steamboats gather at Pittsburg Landing as Grant and Buell build up their forces along the Tennessee River.
Federal steamboats gather at Pittsburg Landing as Grant and Buell build up their forces along the Tennessee River.

Shiloh National Military Park sits just north of the border of southwestern Tennessee and northeastern Mississippi.  Of the major battlefields of the American Civil War, Shiloh lies farther out of reach to the average tourist than the others.  By car, the fields lie two hours by car from Memphis and three from Nashville.  As a result, you will not find as many visitors on the spread-out grounds as some of the other Battle parks. It is important to understand the build up to Shiloh to better figure out why there was even a battle here.

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ARTISTIC ESPIONAGE IN THE NORTHWEST – HENRY JAMES WARRE

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Falls of the Peloos River Henry J. Warre - note the Natives dressed in Plains Indian garb.
Falls of the Peloos River Henry J. Warre – note the Natives dressed in Plains Indian garb.

The Royal Army in 1845 sent out Lieutenants Henry James Ware and Mervin Vavasour to evaluate American presence in the Pacific Northwest and British ability to militarily respond.  The political crisis brewing since the late 1830s responsible for Warre’s mission across the North American continent, however, dissipated by the time Warre returned to Britain. 

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SMOKE ON THE BAY – A QUICK GLANCE AT REYKJAVÍK

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Alþingi sits on the south side of the Austurvöllur park.
Alþingi sits on the south side of the Austurvöllur park. Heart of Iceland’s democracy.

Two full days on an Icelandair stopover, what to do?  Sunny but cold for the first day and clouds move in for the second.  Get out of town for the first day – Golden Circle and Northern Lights.  Sleep late and enjoy cosmopolitan Iceland in its capital city of Reykjavík.

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CALDERA DE TABURIENTE – MAGIC IN THE CANARIES

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Northern and eastern rims of the Caldera de Taburiente.
Northern and eastern rims of the Caldera de Taburiente.

A recent trip took me to the Caldera de Taburiente on the island of La Palma on the western edge of the Canary Islands.  The Canaries – not named for the birds but for dogs the pre-Spanish people kept and ate – are hugely popular destinations for sunseekers from northern Europe.  The interesting geology of the islands is not what brings in the plane loads of tourists, though what they seek for a large part, results from geological processes.  Beaches, sun and alcohol, not necessarily in that order.  Fuerteventura, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote all promise kilometers of beaches for the sun-deprived northerners to escape the long winters with.

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BORDERS TO THE BATTLE LINE – FEDERAL REGULAR ARMY AND THE CIVIL WAR

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Popular view of the men making up the US Regular Army.
Mick Moloney’s version of “The Regular Army O!“. The song provided a popular view of the men making up the US Regular Army.

For neophytes to the study of the American Civil War, the function played by the pre-war Federal Regular Army before, during and after continues to reside a bit in obscurity.  Officers from the antebellum army played large roles on both sides during the war, though they rarely achieved greatness remaining a part of the Federal Regular Army, even if staying true to their oath as army officers.  Those officers usually took up new commissions in the many militia units raised by the different States – again on both sides.  Rapid promotion and the chance to play much larger roles than they played before the war represented key factors in the exodus.  Which comes back to the question, what role did the Regular Army play during the war?

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ICELAND’S MAGIC DISPLAYED IN THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

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Gullfoss pours with frozen mists coating the canyon walls.
Gullfoss pours with frozen mists coating the canyon walls.

Nature comes to mind when reflecting upon Iceland.  Two aspects of Iceland’s natural beauty come bundled together on the Golden Circle Tour through which many tourists to the island nation gain their introductions – geysirs and waterfalls in the form of the geothermal area of Haukadaulur and the amazing waterfall, Gullfoss – Golden Waterfall.

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ICELAND IMPRESSIONS – ÞINGVELLIR MAGIC MET ON THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

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Church and Prime Minister's summer home at Þingvellir.
Church and Prime Minister’s summer home at Þingvellir.

A recent trip to Europe ended up flying us through the far northern island country of Iceland.  I had wanted to visit this country since hiking about in the tundra and mountains of Norway back in the early years of the 1980s.  The vast treeless moors of the Hadangervidda and the Jotunheimen served as magnificent introductions into the immense beauty to be discovered in the subarctic.  Iceland figured to take the natural beauty up a notch or two. The tundra also provided a bridge between magical nature with the political past at Þingvellir.

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MONUMENTAL DASH – DAY’S RUN TO UNCOVER ALL MONUMENTS IN A NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD

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Monument glut deep in the forests on the slopes above Cravens House on Lookout Mountain.
Monument glut deep in the forests on the slopes above Cravens House on Lookout Mountain – complexity inserted into a monumental dash.

The number of monuments and marker you can find in some of the National Battlefield Parks preserving American Civil War battlefields can simply numb you.  Granite monuments form literal forests inside some National Battlefield Parks from the American Civil War.   Each monument does have a story, even those not as fancy, expensive and artistic as others.  If you want to see all of them, say in a day or so – a true monumental dash, you will need to put on your running shoes – boots, in some cases, depending on the weather. 

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SOMETHING’S FISHY – FISH LADDERS ELEVATE TO THE NEXT LEVEL

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Waters fall over Bonnie Falls with the graffitied fish ladder offering an easier way up on the right.
Waters fall over Bonnie Falls with graffitied fish ladders offering an easier way up on the right.

If you have lived in Portland long enough, you will end up making a visit to visit the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam, home to Herman the Sturgeon.  The dams along the Columbia River system have hugely curtailed the once humongous runs of salmonids up and down the river and its tributaries.  Overfishing definitely has a role to play in the depletion of the huge runs, but the hydroelectric – flood control dams have even more hugely impacted the once vast movements of fish.  A recent visit to a small local waterfall brought to light part of the plight of the fish encountering physical obstructions to their journeys. One answer to the problem, fish ladders.

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