Two Years in Oregon

A British lawyer trades the foggy streets of London for the wild promise of the Pacific Northwest in this vivid, practical, and unexpectedly moving account of pioneering life. Wallis Nash arrived in Oregon in the 1880s with his family, expecting to write a guide for fellow emigrants, but found himself documenting something deeper: the fragile, exhilarating process of building a community from nothing. He chronicles everything from the geology of the Cascades to the cost of lumber in Portland, from the temperamental Oregon coast to the dry, open plains of the east. This is not tourism but transplantation, and Nash writes with the anxious hope of a man who needs Oregon to work out. His enthusiasm is genuine but never blind; he notes failures, hardships, and disappointments alongside the extraordinary beauty and opportunity. For anyone curious about the American frontier through foreign eyes, or anyone who has ever wondered what it takes to leave everything behind and start over.