The Last Voyageur: Amos Burg and the Rivers of the West by Vince Welch

 OHQ vol. 115, no. 2 Goldwater loved hisArizona desert and mountains .Drake quotesAbbey’s telling an audience in 1978 that“everything I see that is dangerous in the power of the state, I see as equally dangerous in the concentration of economic and industrial power” (p. 159). Such ambiguity is usually far more characteristic of reality than we often recognize. Stephen Haycox University of Alaska, Anchorage The Last Voyageur: Amos Burg and the Rivers of the West by Vince Welch The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, Washington, 2012. Photographs, maps, bibliography, index. 320 pages. $24.95 paper. A Portland native, Amos Burg was once a nationally renowned adventure writer, photographer , film-maker, and lecturer. Between 1920 and 1940, he became the last (and sometimes also the first) person to voyage down some of the West’s most celebrated rivers from source to mouth while they still flowed freely, unfettered by dams. Impressively, he undertook most of those journeys in canvas-andwood canoes or other small craft. Burg was an innovator,too.On a trip down the Southwest’s Green and Colorado rivers, he introduced an inflatable, vulcanized rubber boat of his own design, an idea that would eventually revolutionize white water recreation. His exploits extended far beyond the American West. He sailed around Cape Horn through the stormy coastal waters off Argentina and Chile, where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet. A few years later, he made a far less perilous yet pleasurable four-hundred-mile journey on the Grand Union Canal System from London to Liverpool. Burg narrated those travels in a dozen feature articles for National Geographic Magazine and a score of ethnographic and adventure films. He spoke before audiences of as many as four thousand people and, at the ripe old age of thirty, he was elected to the elite Explorers Club. He made a career of promoting wilderness adventure to the American public. Written for general readers, The Last Voyageur follows Burg on a series of odysseys down the Columbia,Snake,Yukon,Green,Colorado, Salmon, and Mackenzie rivers and beyond. Along the way,it offers an arresting glimpse of some of the Rocky Mountain West’s mightiest rivers just before dam builders harnessed them to power the post-war industrial boom. Burg did not protest those dams. And yet in 1983, when he retraced his path, by road, along the Snake and Columbia rivers, a wave of sadness washed over him. The following year, in “A Voyager’s Lament,” his last published essay, Burg suggested that western rivers had embodied America’s pioneering spirit, but no more. Indeed, he wrote, the nation’s willingness to flood such natural wonders as Celilo Falls without remorse was incomprehensible. Wilderness rivers could inspire the human soul; dams could produce only electricity. Welch offers a well-written story that is, by turns, thrilling, elegant, and elegiac. The author was once a professional river guide and provides valuable perspective on some of the challenges and dangers that Burg faced.Welch draws on extensive collections at the Oregon Historical Society and theAlaska State Library. He also occasionally inserts his own river reminiscences. Although generally engaging, these interludes can be jarring, such as when a modern-day reflection interrupts Burg’s voyage down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon just as it seems to reach a climax. Disappointingly , the book includes few of Burg’s  Reviews photographs, and the images that appear are often muddy. Maps of each of Burg’s journeys also would have been helpful. Nonetheless, The Last Voyageur will interest white-water enthusiasts,armchair adventurers,and anyone interested in the history of outdoor recreation and wilderness. Marsha Weisiger University of Oregon Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph by Diane L. Goeres-Gardner foreword by John Terry The History Press, Charleston, South Carolina, 2013. Illustrations, tables, notes, index. 334 pages. $21.99 paper. During the 1960s and 1970s, policies of deinstitutionalization emptied state hospitals across the nation. Subsequent changes in federal funding and state budget cuts led to such neglect of Oregon State Hospital (OSH) that it was nearly wiped off the map. Thanks to Oregonians who care about their historic buildings, a portion of the 1883 “J” building...

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