The case for place: 80 years of demographic and economic change in the boom and bust Pacific Northwest

To further the effort of describing and understanding the phenomenon that the New American West has become, this dissertation presents a detailed county and place analysis of population and economic change over the last 80 years (from 1920–2000) in the three-state Pacific Northwest: Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Through statistical and spatial analysis, mapping, and narrative prose, this project ties regional population change in the Northwest's 119 counties and 713 incorporated places to seminal historical events; describes and delineates the conversion from the Old West industries of mining, lumbering, ranching, and agriculture to a New West economy anchored by recreation, tourism, retirement, and high technology; tests the validity of the Pacific Northwest's regional distinctiveness; compares county- and place-level studies to determine the effect of scale; and chooses from the spatial and statistical analyses, five representative case studies to ground the research in actual places: Bend, Oregon; Leavenworth and Port Townsend, Washington; and Kellogg and Riggins, Idaho.; Completion of the project revealed the following: the 20th century was extremely volatile for the region's places and landscapes—boom and bust were the norm; population and economics changed unevenly around the Pacific Northwest, especially in urban versus rural areas; the 1990s proved to be unique in a number of ways; the complex presence of the federal government has been the region's greatest influence; in 100 years, the region transformed from a resource hinterland to a national bellwether; counties often do a poor job of capturing the place-level experiences; and finally, the Pacific Northwest serves as a useful normative average for the greater American West.; The significance of this dissertation resides in its ability to reveal an emerging New Pacific Northwest in far greater detail and accuracy than has hitherto been accomplished. By combining an often-neglected historical perspective with GIS tools and a firm grounding in synthetic geography, this research serves three important purposes: contributing historical context to the wealth of contemporary scholarship devoted to the New West; adding place to the inherently placeless studies aimed at understanding the emerging region in non-geographic terms; and proving that scale matters when comparing place and county experiences.