Stewart H. Holbrook (1893–1964)

Stewart Holbrook wrote for The Oregonian newspaper in the decades bracketing WWII, and had a pretty good side hustle going with magazine articles and books, mostly centering on the Pacific Northwest.

Little Annie Oakley and Other Rugged People is a collection of 28 of articles published in the 1940s and deals, as the title suggests, with various oddball characters ranging from the famous to the obscure. Oakley is only one of the better-known subjects, and she fares better in her brief show more biography than a couple of other Western noteworthies, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill being prime examples of the myth being deconstructed with humor and insight.

But where Holbrook really shines is in his re-creation of the heyday of the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest, much of it observed firsthand as he worked the camps as a young man. Here are vividly-drawn whistle punks, bull cooks, Wobblies, and hard-working, hard-playing, hard-drinking loggers, along with stories of the towns and communities that grew up to serve them.

Many of Holbrook’s books are still available with just a little digging, and the payoff is well worth the effort. show less

Short, lively summaries of 10 true-crime incidents, most from the early 1900s, that occurred in rural settings from remote Oregon homesteads to isolated Maine fishing villages.

The lead story is probably the standout, dealing as it does with the trifecta of sex, religious mania, and murder. Close behind that is the tale of a homicidal Indiana widow whose long-distance suitors showed up with cash to help her lift a non-existent morgage, and were never seen again. (And you thought romance scams show more were an invention of the internet age!) Most of the others deal with such mundanities as money, property, sex (there it is again), and revenge.

Holbrook sums it up with the perfect ending paragraph: "My research has also convinced me that the most interesting crimes in the United States have been committed by persons with rural and backwoods, or at least small-town, backgrounds. I don't think this proves anything in particular, or if it does that it is very important; but it does amuse me when I hear city people wonder, as I often do, what on earth the folks at the forks of the creek can find to talk about." show less

Unfairly forgotten primo Northwest writer who has an unsparing eye and a sensitive BS detector. Funny, exciting, poignant and highly recommended, especially if you live in the Pacific Northwest. Loggers and anarchists, murderers and crazies, all here, all beautifully explicated.

Selected writings from Stewart Holbrook, who came west in the 1920s and eventually began to write for the Oregonian newspaper, with a keen eye toward the region's history and its people.

Holbrook had a particular fondness for the cantankerous, obstinate, argumentative, and fiercely independent denizens of the far northwest corner of the country, which he considered to be utterly unique. Here he recalls emigrant tales, logging camp stories, the early, rowdy days of Portland and Seattle, the show more 25-year-old, 104-pound secretary who was dispatched to clean up a rowdy mining town (and did it in record time), stories from the genuine "longest bar in the world", and other oddities.

Published in 1952, the book spends a great deal of time describing the glories of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. Holbrook certainly didn't have the prescience to see the near collapse of this economic behemoth 30 years later as environmental pressures, increasing regulation, and foreign competition eviscerated what had been a backbone of the region's economy.

That unwitting elegy gives the end of the book a bittersweet tang, but there is plenty to smile about here, too. Highly recommended for local historians. show less