Hard Times in Paradise

Blessed with vast expanses of virgin timber, a good harbor, and a San Francisco market for its lumber, the Coos Bay area once dubbed itself "a poor man's paradise." A new Prologue and Epilogue by the author bring this story of gyppo loggers, longshoremen, millwrights, and whistle punks into the twenty-first century, describing Coos Bay’s transition from timber town to a retirement and tourist community, where the site of a former Weyerhaeuser complex is now home to the Coquille Indian Tribe’s The Mill Casino.

William G. Robbins is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at Oregon State University. He is the author of Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940 and Landscapes of Conflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000, among other books.

Map 1 Coos County, Oregon

Map 2 Coos Bay area

Prologue to the Revised Edition

Preface to the Original Edition

Introduction

1) Poor Man's Paradise

2) An Empire Itself

3) The "Big Mill" and Its World

4) Logging the Coos Timber

5) Getting By

6) Surviving the Great Depression

7) The Second World War

8) Lumber Capital of the World

9) Timber Fever

10) Bosses and Workers

11) Hard Times and Survivors

Post Mortem: Reflections on the Present Condition

Epilogue to the Revised Edition

Notes

Index