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Pacific Northwest history

Quintard Taylor speaking with a blue background scene behind him
Spring 2024

Quintard Taylor: WSU ‘set my life trajectory’

Quintard Taylor Jr. didn’t expect to stay in Pullman for four years. He’d joined the faculty of Washington State University’s new Black Studies Program in 1971, thinking he’d teach for a year before going on to get his doctorate in history.

Instead, the decision to come to Pullman “became kind of life-changing,” he now says. “It set my career and my life trajectory.”

His work at WSU, researching the history of Black people in the Pacific Northwest, would become his doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota. It was the foundation of a public television series called South by Northwest. And it informed his … » More …

Sepia photo of historical Malden, Washington
Winter 2023

Historical Malden

Malden was once one of the largest and fastest growing communities in the Palouse region. It was the headquarters for the Columbia Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway. Malden was relatively unsettled before 1909. That was the year the railroad build a depot and roundhouse. The town continued to grow until the 1920s* when the railroad moved its operations out of Malden.

*In 1928, the population of Malden was 2,500 residents.

Click on the image below to view a few historical photographs of this storied Whitman County town.

Malden ... <a href=» More …

Book cover of Pioneering Death
Winter 2022

Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon

Book cover of Pioneering Death

Peter Boag

University of Washington Press: 2022

 

His father slapped him, commanding him to tend to his chores. Instead, the 18-year-old marched into the farmhouse where he lived with his parents and siblings, grabbed his father’s rifle, and shot him in the back of the head before turning the weapon on his mother and a community member who had stopped to chat.

The more historian Peter Boag learned about the killing in west Linn County⁠—and its place in the larger social … » More …

Book cover of The Cascade Killer
Winter 2022

The Cascade Killer: A Luke McCain Novel

Book cover of The Cascade Killer

Rob Phillips ’78 Comm.

Latah Books: 2020

 

A father and son snag a black bear near Chinook Pass during their first hunt of the season and come across human remains⁠—an ear among the animal’s stomach contents. Luke McCain, a Yakima-based Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife officer who also just happens to be a WSU alum, is called to the scene along with his trusty sidekick.

Jack, a yellow Labrador retriever, leads McCain and a crew of sheriff’s deputies … » More …