CHAPTER 33
Descriptive Prose Writers
The present area of Oregon is 95,607 square miles, considerably more than 1,000 square miles being water surface. The state ranks ninth in size in the union. The state has 300 miles of coast line, exclusive of indentations. The width east and west is about 350 miles, the length north and south averaging approximately 275 miles.
The Oregon Blue Book.
Oregon with its fascinating diversity of physical
characteristics, the wide range of experience afforded
to its people and its lingering individualities of cul
ture, has provided an extensive field for descriptive
writers, whose larger quantity of composition has
been printed in newspapers, magazines and pamphlets
rather than in books. Since experience and observation
are usually mixed to form a combined subjective and
objective interpretation of a local environment, this
becomes a significant type of regional expression j and
has in addition a folk, aspect because so many write it.
Instead of a complete bibliography of Oregon books
of description, which are themselves in small proportion to the total amount otherwise printed, a representative group of writers in this field will be listed to
show the richness and variety of their subject matter.
Some of the special bibliographies, particularly in outdoor fields, indicate the large amount of description and exposition that have been written on Oregon subjects. Bibliography of Oregon Geology, published by the University of Oregon in 1926, gives a total of 1001 items ranging in importance from short magazine articles to books. Bibliography of the Cascade Mountains, printed as early as 1905 in Mazama, contains 159 references, exclusive of those to Mount Rainier, and mentions articles in 18 outside magazines.
