Bill Gulick Books In Order

The Dam Builders

The years between 1949 and 1975 were dam building years along the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia and Snake Rivers. During those twenty five years the Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps of Engineers, and private entities such as Pacific Power, Portland General Electric, and the Idaho Power Company turned the previously free flowing rivers into a series of quiet lakes. Just as a great river influences the lives of the people in its watershed, so do the acts of those people influence the life of the river. Without water, people die. Without peoples’ concern, a river dies.

In 1948, Bill Gulick witnessed, firsthand, what can happen to a region and a city when the power of a river is not respected. Breaking through its dikes, the Columbia destroyed a great deal of property and took many lives in northwest Portland, Oregon. That catastrophe formed the basis of Gulick’s ‘Roll on Columbia’ series of which The Dam Builders is the fourth, and final, volume.

In The Dam Builders Bill Gulick explores what people and corporations have done to the Columbia River and the price we must pay for it.

They Came to a Valley

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton PressThey came from all walks of life, courageous travelers seeking a new beginning in the West. They were young and old, doctors and farmers, lawyers and carpenters, Missourians and Iowans, Republicans and Democrats. Their only bond was the fear of crossing the big, beautiful but hostile land that they were determined to make their own.

The Moon-Eyed Appaloosa

Corporal Burke Langdon thought he was escaping from the doldrums of frontier army life when he was assigned to take six strange looking speckled Nez Perce horses from Fort Boise to Fort Walla Walla. Trooper Langdon’s dreams of rest and relaxation evaporate when he and his partner, Private Freddie Stahl, find themselves in the middle of a deadly conflict involving a wagon train of Oregon bound Missourians, a Snake Indian war party and a group of Army deserters, led by a renegade sergeant. The deadly climax takes place in the shadow of mysterious Malheur Butte. Bill Gulick spins a rousing tale of treachery, violence and courage, set in the early 1860’s, on the dusty, sage covered Snake River Plain. Gulick uses years of research to create an entertaining and exciting story for readers of all ages.

Outlaws of the Pacific Northwest

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton PressThe lawlessness of the frontier towns of the plains states is well documented. However, as silver and gold deposits were found in the Pacific Northwest the rush of miners and speculators that brought to the region brought with it its own share of crime and criminals. Author Bill Gulick sticks to the facts in telling the stories of this region but does so in swift conversational prose that entertains and educates.

Roadside History of Oregon

This volume takes the reader through time, from Lewis and Clark’s journey along the Columbia River to pioneer town builders at the end of the Oregon Trail, from the tenders of lonely lighthouses off the storm wracked coast to the Chinese miners working the depths of Hells Canyon.

Manhunt

On June 9, 1902, Harry Tracy shot his way out of the Oregon State Penitentiary, killing three guards. The breakout marked the beginning of a two month, two state Manhunt, unique in Northwest history. Bill Gulick, dean of Northwest history writers, uses the accounts of newspaper reporters who covered the chase to paint a fascinating portrait of Tracy the first of a new breed of badman that surfaced at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Chief Joseph Country

The relationship between Westering Americans and the Nez Perce Indians covers a time span of one hundred years, from the meeting of the Lewis and Clark party with the Indians in 1805 to the death of Chief Joseph in 1904. It is epic drama, taking place on a vast stage during a critical period in the development of the United States. Certainly no setting could be more spectacular than the rugged, beautiful homeland of this tribe. No story can equal in historical importance the long standing friendship given by the Nez Perces to the white newcomers in their country. And no event is more poignant, bitter, and tragic than the Nez Perce War. Before acquiring the horse around 1730, the Nez Perces occupied approximately 27,000 square miles of what is now north central Idaho, northeastern Oregon, and southeastern Washington. After becoming a mounted people, they ranged over a much larger area, traveling east to the buffalo country claimed by Blackfeet, Crow, and Sioux, west to the great fishing and trading station on the lower Columbia, Celilo Falls. Uniquely situated as they were between the Plains and Coastal Indian cultures, they would play a key role in the struggle between Great Britain and the United States as to which nation would take title to the Pacific Northwest. In Chief Joseph Country: Land of the Nez Perce, author Bill Gulick lets the participants in the developing drama tell the story in their own words by excerpting diaries, letters, and statements made in contemporary accounts. Beginning with the prehistory of the Nez Perces, he relates how, after being pedestrians for eight thousand years, acquisition of the horse drastically altered their way of life. Then, in rapid succession, came firearms, American explorers, British fur traders, the Manifest Destiny struggle, missionaries, Oregon Trail emigrants, settlers, gold miners, farmers, and finally war. ‘If there is a bias in this book, it is that I have given more credence to statements made by Indians than to words written by white men,’ the author says. ‘Time and again in my research I have come across references to the importance the Indian placed on telling the plain, simple truth when relating any event in which he was involved. To the contrary, time and again I have found statements made by white leaders so contradictory and at variance with the truth that I began to question everything they wrote.’ In selecting the many historical photographs and sketches used to illustrate the book, the author examined the holdings of some twenty institutions from coast to coast, some of which dated back to the 1850s. As he did in Snake River Country, Bill Gulick applies skills learned as a novelist and dramatist to the non fiction field of history, using the twin tools of dramatic narrative and sound research to bring history alive to the layman reader. He writes: ‘As in all epic dramas, forces beyond the understanding or control of the people involved were at work as the Nez Perces and the whites confronted one another, driving them toward a fate neither could forsee. ‘Here, I have recorded that confrontation from the Indian point of view.’

Snake River Country

‘Born in incredible beauty, flowing through incredible desolation, nourishing incredible fertility…
‘

So begins Bill Gulick’s definitive story of the Snake and the vast area it drains.

The Snake may justly be called the last important wild river left in the Pacific Northwest, for its potential power, irrigation, navigation, and recreation is only now beginning to be developed. As the only large river wholly contained within the United States whose waters flow from the western slope of the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, it has played an important role in exploration, in empire and settlement. Yet because the wide expanse of the country through which it flows is sparsely settled and capable of great development in the years to come, the present and future of the Snake should be as vitally interesting to the reader as is its colorful past.

In telling the story of the watershed, Gulick felt that a mere compilation of facts, dates and statistics would not do the job. As a novelist, he wanted to catch the drama of the unfolding story in human terms that is, in the words of the people who made things happen. The explorers, the British and American fur trappers competing to win an empire, the missionaries coming West to make converts of the Indians, the gold miners, the badmen, the emigrants, the stern wheeler captains, the framers learning to turn desert lands into productive fields through the miracle of irrigation all are here, their stories told in their own words.

Other sections of the book deal with the modern big dam era on the Snake, the struggle between public and private power, the development of tug and barge navigation on the lower river, the grain rate wars between rail and water transport, the quarrel between environmentalists and dam builders over the as yet free running reach of river in lower Hells Canyon, and the question of diversion of water from the river to the thirsty Southwest.

Using water, power, population, food, and fiber projections to the year 2020, which he has obtained from the latest surveys and predictions available, he asks questions that concern us all and answers them in layman’s terms. As in the historical sections of the book, he lets the people who make things happen that is, the advocates of dams, fish, power, wilderness, industrialization, and other interests speak for themselves.

‘Obviously, all these diverse interests cannot be served as they would like to be served,’ he says. ‘In the end, we must make choices. But before choosing, we must learn what the alternatives are.’

Traveler’s History of Washington

What happened here? Travelers interested in history want to know about historical happenings in the Evergreen State. Now they have an amicable and informative traveling companion. Invaluable to vacationers, weekend travelers, and Sunday drivers, this bible of Washington history shows the way, and informs the curious traveler of historical sites and events along the route. The book’s six divisions representing the state’s regions have easy to use travelers’ maps and mileage charts, and are packed full of historic photos and illustrations from Washington’s fascinating past.

Steamboats on Northwest Rivers

For 100 years, before the dams were built on the Columbia Snake river system, steamboats carried cargo and people to the farthest reaches of the rivers. Where water flowed, sturdy steamboats and bold captains went with no navigational aids needed. William Polk Gray piloted steamboats on wilderness rivers from southwestern Idaho to northern Alaska. Gray was one of fifty or so captains who became as famous as sports stars are today. Their names and feats were known to travelers and river dwellers, just as the distinctive tone of each boat’s whistle was recognized by hero worshipping boys who dreamed of growing up to be river captains. Bill Gulick, dean of Northwest history writers, tells the story of this colorful period in the region’s history.