Timber has always been one of the principle industries in the United States. The tasks and technologies associated with logging trees, hauling them to sawmills and other forest product plants, processing them into useable products, and then moving those to market always have left substantial marks on both history and the landscape. Yet the industry has never been static, and changing economics, technologies, social pressures, and other forces have left many traces of the past as the new replaced the old, as plants opened and closed, and as values and philosophies shifted. The ghosts of the timber industry come in many forms, such as abandoned sawmill sites, stumps in the forest, static displays in city parks and museums, tourist attractions, and geographic place names. Taken together, they tell the story of a way of life that, while it continues today, has radically changed from the old ways. This book seeks to present a few snapshot views of some of these remnants in the Pacific Coast states, explaining their role both in history and in the present.

The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down. Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California’s famous redwoods. Yet few who strain their necks to glimpse the tops of the world’s tallest trees understand how unlikely it is that these last isolated groves of giant trees still stand at all. In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s—as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands. The land grab began in 1849, when a “green gold rush” of migrants came to exploit the legendary redwoods that grew along the Russian River. Several generations later, in 1987, Greg King discovered and named Headwaters Forest—at 3,000 acres the largest ancient redwood habitat remaining outside of parks—and he led the movement to save this grove. After a decade of one of the longest, most dramatic, and violent environmental campaigns in US history, in 1999 the state and federal governments protected Headwaters Forest. The Ghost Forest explores a central question, an overhanging mystery: What was it like, this botanical Elysium that grew only along the Northern California coast, a forest so spectacular—but also uniquely valuable as a cornerstone of American economic growth—that in the end it would inspire life-and-death struggles? Few but loggers and surveyors ever saw such magnificent trees, ancient sentinels that, like ghosts, have informed King’s understanding of the world. On a lifelong journey, King finds himself through the generations, and through the trees. A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read Title

What is the role of water in the conversion of former industrial areas? How is water used in engaging the public to experience these sites both as physical and cultural places? Can ecological design foster the coexistence of industry and environment? The book addresses these core questions by examining the impact of the former Oregonian industry (1830-1940) on the Willamette River landscape and discussing how projects of transformation interpret the triangular interplay among industry, landscape and water.This book is a source of suggestions and ideas for scholars, students and professionals in architecture, landscape architecture, planning and their related fields who want to manage the urban landscapes successfully.

Ghostly footsteps, mysteriously locked doors, and apparitions from centuries past. The rolling hills and hollers of the Yadkin Valley have been home to many historic events, from Stonemans raid to the hanging of Tom Dooley. These events have left their imprint on the countys architecture and landscape, and some of them have even left a ghostly legacy. Ghosts of the Yadkin Valley is a collection of spine-tingling tales, including ghost stories from many of the areas National Historic Register sites. Join local storyteller R.G. Absher as he relates the history behind the haunts.

Some of the nation's most compelling ghost stories owe their origin to “The Father of Waters.” Ghosts along the Mississippi River is the first book-length collection of ghost tales from the small towns and bustling cities that have grown up along its banks. The states represented in this book include Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Unlike most collections of “true” ghost stories, Ghosts along the Mississippi River draws from the folk traditions of the northern and the southern United States. These tales are populated with Federal and Confederate soldiers, Native Americans, wealthy entrepreneurs, actors, college students, hotel owners, preachers, slaves, and planters. According to some paranormal investigators, the large number of ghost stories from the Mississippi's river towns, and from watery sites all over the world, are proof that large bodies of water are conductors of psychic energy. Granted, no concrete proof exists that there is a definite connection between the river and any actual ghosts or spiritual phenomena. What is indisputable, though, is the fact that the ghost stories included in Ghosts along the Mississippi River are an invaluable record of the values, dreams, fears, and lives of the people who have called the river home.

The authors explore the tragic history of communities whose stars have long since faded, and the people who once lived, loved, and laboured in them.

In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.