Richard Thompson

The streetcars that plied Oregon's small-town streets were every bit as diverse as those in Portland and their history even more fascinating. Learn of the devastating 1922 fire that scorched Astoria's plank road railways and put a halt to its once-thriving streetcar network. Muse over the tale of a beloved white horse named Old Charlie that proved more efficient at powering Albany's streetcars than the alternative steam locomotive. Laugh at the spectacle...

Willamette Valley Railways tells the story of the electric interurban railways that ran through Oregon's Willamette Valley and of the streetcars that operated in the towns they served. Long before modern light rail vehicles, electric trains were providing Portland and the Willamette Valley with reliable, elegant transportation that was second to none. Between 1908 and 1915, two large systems, the Oregon Electric Railway and the Southern Pacific Red...

Portland neighborhoods owe their location, alignment, and growth to a splendid, 19th-century innovation: the streetcar. This city still bears the imprint of the carlines that once wove their way out to suburbs in every direction, including Fulton, Portland Heights, Goose Hollow, Nob Hill, Slabtown, Willamette Heights, Albina, Saint Johns, Irvington, Rose City, Mount Tabor, Montavilla, Mount Scott, and Sellwood. As routes developed, people used them...

Are you living the good life? Are you living with people you love, in the right place, doing good work, with a sense of purpose? Here is a challenge to reconsider the structure of your entire life, to choose for yourself what is needed to "repack" it for greater purpose and satisfaction.

2018 Colorado Book Award finalist "Featuring a crime spree and a murderer, both as cold as the Midwestern winter setting, this whodunit will burn like frostbite." -Library Journal It's the Garden of Eden. And the weather is absolutely freezing! The discovery of the body of a young man inside the mausoleum of the Civil War veteran who commissioned this bizarre sculpture park makes the blood of Undersheriff Lottie Albright and her husband's Aunt...

The summer of 1919 is over, and on the high prairie, a small army of men, women, and machines moves across the land, bringing in the wheat harvest. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindlestiffs, cooks, camp followers, and hobos join the tide. Big Wheat is king as people gleefully embrace the gospels of progress and greed. But with Big Wheat comes a serial killer who calls himself the Windmill Man. He believes he has a holy calling to water the...