“Oregon: End of the Trail” — the 1940 WPA guide
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Among the silver linings of America’s Great Depression was the federal Work Projects Administration. The WPA commissioned all that wonderful art, with which most people are familiar, but it also hired hundreds of writers in various state writing projects.
The Oregon Writers Project’s greatest accomplishment was creation of a single book, “Oregon: End of the Trail,” in which was created a snapshot of a still-young state.
Intended as a fairly sophisticated tourist guide, the book details everything from the state of theater — the young “Shakespearean Festival” in Ashland was then putting on four plays during one week each summer — to tall tales from the north woods.
Here’s its description of Oregon Caves:
Carved through unreckoned ages are weirdly beautiful caverns in which clusters of intricately sculptured marble hang from frescoed ceilings like frozen lotus flowers. Out-thrust from the walls are shelves adorned with bric-a-brac fashioned by nature, some of it grotesque, but all of it arresting in its cold brilliance.
And our favorite line, from the preface:
California has climate; Iowa has corn; Massachusetts has history; Utah has religion; and New York has buildings and money and hustle and congestion; but that “lovely dappled up-and-down land called Oregon” has an ever-green beauty as seductive as the lotus of ancient myth.
Cool, huh? Available used, it’s worth a look for anyone interested in the state.
