Pacific North West

An illustrated guide to the landscape, people and history of the Pacific North west.

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The Pacific Northwest is an area of contrasts: on the one hand it is home to the major conurbations of Seattle - the Emerald City - and Vancouver in Canada; on the other it takes in four US National Parks - Crater Lake in Oregon, and Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades in Washington - and several Canadian National Parks in the Pacific Northwest, from Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and Mount Revelstoke National Park and Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Range alongside Rogers Pass, as well as Kootenay National Park and Yoho National Park on the British Columbia flank of the Rockies. Covering the coast from Oregon to Alaska, by way of Washington and British Columbia, including parts of inland Idaho, the Pacific Northwest is a vast area.The ecology of the area is fascinating: it is the world's largest temperate rain forest zone; it contains one of North America's tallest mountains - the stratovolcano Mt. Rainier, in the Washington Cascades, at 14,410 feet (4,392 m) - as well as the most powerful volcano in America in recent generations Mount - St. Helens - most famous for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980.
With a history of human occupation spanning many millennia, and the incredible richness of Pacific Northwest fisheries (salmon, etc.), it is not surprising that the Indian Tribes who occupied the area historically were some of the most complex hunter-gatherer-fishers in history. They lived in large villages or towns, built plank houses and large canoes, and had sophisticated artistic and technological traditions.In British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, for instance, maritime tribes like the Tlingit and Haida erected the large and elaborately carved totem poles that are iconic of Pacific Northwest artistic traditions. Throughout the area, thousands of descendants of these proud Pacific Northwest tribes still live and many of their cultural traditions continue to be practiced - as is amply shown in this superbly illustrated book.