Hard Times in Paradise

Coos Bay, Oregon

William G Robbins author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Washington Press

Published:1st May '06

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Hard Times in Paradise cover

A new Prologue and Epilogue bring this story of gyppo loggers, longshoremen, millwrights, and whistle punks into the twenty-first century,

Presents a story of gyppo loggers, longshoremen, millwrights, and whistle punks. The author describes Coos Bay's transition from timber town to a retirement and tourist community, where the site of a former Weyerhaeuser complex is home to the Coquille Indian Tribe's Mill Casino.

Blessed with vast expanses of virgin timber, a good harbor, and a San Francisco market for its lumber, the Coos Bay area once dubbed itself "a poor man's paradise." A new Prologue and Epilogue by the author bring this story of gyppo loggers, longshoremen, millwrights, and whistle punks into the twenty-first century, describing Coos Bay’s transition from timber town to a retirement and tourist community, where the site of a former Weyerhaeuser complex is now home to the Coquille Indian Tribe’s The Mill Casino.

"Relying heavily on interviews with residents of the Oregon coast, Robbins focuses on the social history of a community and the impact on it of outside forces. He examines workers, work and living conditions, technologies, unemployment, and ways of surviving joblessness. He explores the rise and decline of labor unions and writes of mills--as well as of woods and of small firms (the "gyppos") and the giants such as Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific." Richard S. Kirkendall, Western Historical Quarterly "Historians will find this study useful in its survey of the southern Oregon timber industry, in its indictment of the unwise exploitation of resources in the West, and ... as a model for a study that can be read and appreciated by those who matter most--the people who are the history." Allan Kent Powell, American Historical Review "Both scholars and general readers will find this book a cogent microcosmic chronicle of Oregon's leading industry told in very human terms." Craig Wollner, Oregon Historical Quarterly

ISBN: 9780295985480

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 372g

236 pages

revised edition