Barbara Lloyd McMichael

‘Hiking Washington’s History’
Judy Bentley — UW Press — 304 pages — $18.95

Oh, here is a wonderful book! South Seattle Community College professor and local history activist Judy Bentley has put together “Hiking Washington’s History” and she undoubtedly has the blisters to prove it!

 

This book describes hundreds of miles’ worth of trails in our state that have historical origins, whether traditional trading paths used by Native American tribes, routes bushwhacked by early European and American explorers or wagon wheel tracks beaten into the earth by pioneers coming west on the Oregon Trail.

 

History may lie “close to the surface in Washington,” as Bentley asserts up front, but rapid population growth and development in our state have scoured, flooded, rerouted, uprooted and paved over once-prominent features of our landscape as well as more subtle traces of generations gone by.

 

That’s why, although Bentley unspools her trail narratives at a storyteller’s deliberate pace, there is still an undertone of urgency. The places she talks about may be preserved and interpreted for posterity — this through the efforts of a patchwork of entities: municipal, county, state and national governments, railroads and Native American tribes, historical societies, public/private trusts and more. But what else around us is being obliterated right now by the bulldozer or the wrecking ball?

 

Now is the time for you to get out and explore!

 

Bentley outlines 40 hikes, distributed across nine geographic regions, and provides a brief historical introduction of each area. The hikes range from short day trips to longer backpacking excursions.  

 

The Olympic Peninsula, for example, features everything from the half-mile Cape Flattery walk on the Makah Reservation, which will take you to the northwesternmost tip of the continental United States, to the 44-mile Press Expedition Trail. Sponsored by a Seattle newspaper in 1889, a half dozen “men of vim and vigor” spent six months blazing their way through dense forest and rugged high country to create what to this day remains the only complete north-south trail through the Olympic Mountains.

 

Many of the trails Bentley mentions are familiar haunts to me — Lake Ozette out to Capa Alava, Coal Creek, Duwamish, Ebey’s Landing, Old Robe, Naches Pass, Medicine Creek, Klickitat Trail, Snoqualmie Wagon Road. These descriptions I naturally read with a more critical eye — and only occasionally found things to quibble with. One example: Bentley missed an opportunity to clarify the confusing nomenclatural history of the White/Green River in an otherwise very interesting discussion of a tour along the Duwamish River.

 

But there is much more to commend than to complain about. Even the source notes are generous and inviting — Bentley mentions Theodore Winthrop’s “Canoe and Saddle,” for instance. That classic, paired with Bentley’s guide, would make a purely delightful gift.

 

Whether you regard “Hiking Washington’s History” as a history book disguised as a hiking guide or a trail guide stuffed with historical anecdotes, get yourself a copy of this book and start planning for adventures across the state in 2011!

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.