The Hells Canyon Complex was controversial before even being built, ever since the Idaho public scrutinized the Idaho Power Company’s request to license three dams on the Snake River in 1947. During the New Deal era, public power—a method of energy…

Union, Oregon began as an industrial town in 1862, serving as one of the state’s primary economic centers through the end of the nineteenth century. Abel Elsworth Eaton, a former schoolteacher in the Midwest, moved to Oregon seeking financial gain,…

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, accompanied his parents on Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition for the Corps of Discovery. Although a small infant, he made the entire trek from North Dakota to the…

Boston inventor and businessman Nathaniel J. Wyeth conducted two separate expeditions to the Pacific Northwest in 1832 and 1834 with his Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company. On his latter expedition, Wyeth established a fort in what is now…

Like many areas in the continental United States and beyond, human presence in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge spans not hundreds of years but thousands. Though steady environmental changes altered the land’s usage over time (mainly the rise and…