This article is an adaptation of Sun Valley, Ketchum, and the Wood River Valley by John W. Lundin.
Have you ever visited the mountains in the winter, and wondered “how did anyone build anything here?!” Even in the summertime, mountainous conditions present countless challenges to settlement and prosperity. And yet, early settlers of Wood River Valley did.
Idaho’s Wood River Valley is a backcountry gateway to wilderness areas and the popular ski destinations in Ketchum and Sun Valley. Beneath the beautiful runs and sweeping vistas is a history marked by prospecting, conflict, and innovation.
Settlers first arrived in the early 1880s, attracted by a silver rush. By the summer of 1879, more than a dozen mines were operating.By the end of 1879, there were 342 mining locations, and 12 mines were purchased by outside investors for $100,000. Word of the valley’s riches reached the outside world, and many thousands of hopefuls poured in to seek their fortunes.
Beginning in the spring of 1880, prospectors from all over the world seeking their fortunes flooded into the “wonderful Wood River country” and in 1883, the railroad connected the valley to the world beyond its borders, bringing in outside capital through silver mining and later sheep raising.
Pioneering the Wood River Valley
This view of Ketchum from the 1880s looks northwest toward the Big Wood River and Bald Mountain. The multistory buildings are the Ketchum School (near center) and the Comstock & Clark building on what later became Sun Valley Road. Fish and game were plentiful in the Wood River Valley in the 1880s. Fishing and hunting were both forms of recreation and ways to obtain food. Showing how productive the fishery was, these trout were caught in one hour.Skiing was a means of transportation and recreation in the valley’s early days, done with homemade skis and one pole.
In 1936, during the Great Depression, Union Pacific board chairman Averell Harriman built Sun Valley, the country’s first destination ski resort, spending $2.5 million in two years ($45 million today).
Averell Harriman (right) and publicist Steve Hannigan inspect Sun Valley Lodge under construction. It was designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, known for designing national park lodges. The lodge was concrete, but raw wood was placed on it when wet, making the exterior appear to be wood. Work started in May 1936, and the resort opened in December 1936. Hannagan named the resort Sun Valley and created a plan for its development.
Sun Valley offered a lavish lifestyle, a luxurious lodge, Austrian ski instructors, and chairlifts invented by Union Pacific engineers. Known as America’s St. Moritz, it was a magnet for beautiful people and serious skiers.
Steve Hannagan’s famous ad, “Winter sports under a summer sun,” emphasized sun and warmth and not the cold and snow the Florida native disliked. Hannagan designed a plan to make Sun Valley an icon for winter sports and snow, like Florida was for sun, by using celebrities, attractive women, Olympic stars, and monied families. (Courtesy Union Pacific Museum.)
Learn more: Discover the history of Sun Valley, Ketchum, and the Wood River Valley
Having written #1 hit songs in five different decades, Bobby Braddock is one of country music’s most successful and prolific songwriters. Here are five books to read that will have you putting your old records on!
Country Music’s Greatest Lines: Lyrics, Stories & Sketches from American Classics by Bobby Braddock
Unique stories give the reader a behind-the-scenes look at classics from Hank Williams, Bill Anderson, Roger Miller and Merle Haggard, as well as twenty-first-century icons like Alan Jackson, Taylor Swift and Eric Church. Artist Carmen Beecher brings these tales to vivid life with strikingly realistic illustrations of seldom-seen songwriters, easily recognizable superstars and unforgettable song characters. From late 1940s jukebox hits to present-day chart toppers, Braddock and Beecher offer a magical journey from the songwriter’s pen to the singer’s lips to the listener’s ear. You can find this book here!
“One of country music’s greatest songwriters has given us his own private tour of the collective genius of his profession. I read the book, then I realized how much wonderful music I’ve missed.”
Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author and host of the Revisionist History podcast
Memphis Blues: Birthplace of a Music Tradition by William Bearden
The blues was born in the Mississippi Delta, and since that fateful night in 1903 when W. C. Handy heard the mournful sound of a pocketknife sliding over the strings of an acoustic guitar and the plaintive song of a long-forgotten musician in the hot night of Tutwiler, Mississippi, the blues has been on a journey around the world. From the cotton fields and juke-joints of the Delta, up Highway 61 to Memphis’s Beale Street, St. Louis, the Southside of Chicago, England, and points beyond, the blues is America’s unique form of music. Blues is incisive in its honesty, elemental in its rhythm, and powerful in its almost visceral sensation. Nearly every style of popular music has its roots in the blues. You can find this book here!
Motor City Rock And Roll: The 1960s and 1970s by Bob Harris and John Douglas Peters
Detroit is famous for its cars and its music. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Motor City fans experienced a golden age of rock and roll. Rock was the defiant voice of the boomer generation. The 1960s and the 1970s were turbulent decades. Blacks and women asserted themselves, breaking down the establishment. Rock music, and the spirit and events that defined it, advanced these interests. The war in Vietnam brought tension and national conflict. Drugs and a sexual revolution, made possible by the introduction of the birth control pill, added to the volatile mix. Woodstock, May Day protests, and the resignation of Pres. Richard Nixon were just a few of the upheavals that made these decades two of the most important in the nation’s history. You can find this book here!
Columbus: The Musical Crossroads by David Meyers, Arnett Howard, James Loeffler, and Candice Watkins
Columbus has long been known for its musicians. Unlike New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Nashville, or even Cincinnati, however, it has never had a definable “scene.” Still, some truly remarkable music has been made in this musical crossroads by the many outstanding musicians who have called it home. Since 1900, Columbus has grown from the 28th- to the 15th-largest city in the United States. During this period, it has developed into a musically vibrant community that has nurtured the talents of such artists as Elsie Janis, Ted Lewis, Nancy Wilson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dwight Yoakam, Bow Wow, and Rascal Flatts. But, in many instances, those who chose to remain at home were as good and, perhaps, even better. You can find this book here!
The Muscle Shoals Legacy of FAME by Blake Ells
FAME Publishing first opened in 1959 and produced hits for great musicians like Etta James, Clarence Carter and Aretha Franklin. ot long after, the city of Muscle Shoals became known as the “Hit Recording Capital of the World.” FAME was the foundation that produced Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, the Nutthouse and Sundrop Sound at Single Lock Records – studios that gave a voice to artists like Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and John Paul White. A new generation, including the Pollies and Doc Dailey & the Magnolia Devil, today carries the tradition of great music. Through extensive research, and enriched with interviews from those who lived it, local author Blake Ells chronicles the epic story that started with FAME. You can find this book here!
Can’t get enough of music history? Check out these similar titles and more at arcadiapublishing.com!
Are sharks the most feared animal on the planet? Definitely. How can this be? They aren’t found on land, wandering the streets, lurking in city shadows, or even hiding under your bed. And even though we all know the odds of a shark attack are minuscule, approximately eight people die by shark every year. So how does this seafaring predator get such a fearsome rap? And how, in 1916, did the tiny, blue collar inland town of Matawan, NJ receive a most unwanted monster?
The Summer of Horror
Just as East Coast cities were blossoming into modern metropolises, beach resorts boomed. New Jersey’s famed Jersey Shore provided a needed escape from the noisy, smelly, overcrowded city streets of New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. The famed Atlantic City became a popular vacation destination for the entire East Coast. But the Garden State was a stricken with an unforeseen natural tragedy. Shockingly, in 1916, four shark attacks occurred on the same day! While July 12 started off as a typical summer day, Matawan, New Jersey, located thirty miles north of Spring Lake and situated on a bluff fifty feet above the creek and eleven miles inland, would be the site of four shark attacks, all occurring within the span of about an hour and a half, and where no one had ever dared to think it could.
WARNING!
Thomas Cottrell, a retired captain, witnessed an enormous dark form moving with the tide toward the old Matawan docks. He knew that sharks don’t swim in brackish water like Matawan Creek, but he remembered recent accounts of shark attacks in nearby Spring Lake. No one had ever heard of a shark swimming eleven miles inland. Cottrell shouted warnings, but Lester Stillwell and his buddies didn’t hear him…
The good folks from Matawan gather creek side as rescuers search for the child’s body. Courtesy of Mark Sceurman, Weird New Jersey Magazine. Image sourced from Shark Attacks of the Jersey Shore: A History.
Lester Stillwell
Eleven-year-old Lester went to work with his father on July 12, like most days. Even though he suffered from epilepsy, Lester ran off to go swimming with his buddies after lunch. When Lester’s friend Ally O’Hara felt something rough brush against his leg, he didn’t panic — what was there in Matawan Creek to fear? Suddenly, a large dorsal fin poked out of the water. The boys screamed, and Lester vanished. The boys ran back into town, and three men sprinted to the edge of the creek, searching the surface for Lester. No one believed it was actually a shark. The would-be rescuers assumed that the boy must have drowned. Two days later, Lester’s Stillwell’s body was recovered when it floated to the surface about 150 yards downstream.
Arthur Smith
When carpenter Arthur Smith rushed to the site, he plunged into the creek looking for the lost child. Immediately, Smith was whacked by something unseen. Blood oozed from his leg as he swam for shore. The shark now had a second victim that day. Smith survived his encounter with with over a dozen stitches.
Local shopkeeper Stanley Fisher joined the underwater search for poor Lester Stillwell. Even though Stanley watched as Arthur Smith was pulled onto the creek bank, he kept diving. When Stanley spotted the boy’s body along the bottom, he grabbed a leg and tried to surface. Before he could free the victim’s limb, the shark found Stanley’s thigh. Others in the search party rushed to Stanley, and beat the shark from their boat. Stanley suffered a wide laceration on his right thigh that ran from his hip to his knee. At least ten pounds of flesh were removed, leaving the remainder of his leg a bloody mass. The physician on site feared Stanley wouldn’t survive the trip to the nearest hospital, twenty miles away. Hours later, he was put on the train, which sped nonstop to Long Branch, but he died in the operating room crying, “I did my duty.”
Joseph Dunn
Fourteen-year-old Joseph Dunn, along with his brother Michael, took off from New York City by train for a one-day trip to New Jersey. They found a perfect spot for a dip in Matawan Creek. Michael was lucky, Joseph wasn’t. Something grabbed his leg, yanking him back into the creek. Michael dove into the water, trying to pull Joseph to safety. Thomas Cottrell arrived on the scene, and was able to load Joseph in his boat. Back on shore, the rescue party took the day’s fourth victim by car to New Brunswick, where Joseph would spend the next fifty-nine days recuperating in the hospital.
The community was a shocked into action and sought to find the apex predator that had invaded their unsuspecting town. A mob swarmed the creek with shotguns, harpoons, rakes, spears, clubs, axes, and dynamite. Captain Cottrell, one of the day’s heroes, declared he had caught the 230-pound, seven-foot bull shark at the mouth of Matawan Creek. He later sold tickets to view the Matawan Creek “man-eater.” Impossible as it seemed, a shark attack happened inland, far from the the salty coastline, a shark’s natural hunting ground.
One hundred years after the attack, Matawan paid tribute to the lost child and the hero tailor who lost his life trying to rescue him. The memorial dedicated on July 12, 2016, marks the site of the attack. Author’s photo. Image sourced from Shark Attacks of the Jersey Shore: A History.
When the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed previous Spanish and Mexican land grants, as well as rights for Native Americans to their ancestral homelands. However, organized property theft began soon after. Hispanic and Indigenous people were methodically dispossessed of their homes through manipulation, conspiracy, and even organized crime rings, leading to widespread poverty and isolation.
But in the summer of 1967, those people fought back. It was a roiling time in America–the same summer that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated–and in the middle of all of it, a group of New Mexico activists charged a local courthouse and stood up for their cause.
Reies López Tijerina was a charismatic leader in the New Mexico struggle for civil rights–and especially for the efforts to fight the age-old struggle over these stolen lands.
Tijerina worked with the Alianza Federal de las Mercedes, or the Federal Alliance of Land Grants. But his enemies equated him and his fellow activists with communists, even calling Tijjerina a “Castroite terrorist.”
One of the biggest disputes centered on the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant and the more than half a million acres it controlled. In a heated region with a heated history, Indigenous and Hispanic people in New Mexico argued that they were simply trying to save their land, nothing else. They had been arguing this for generations against a government that did not respect their lands, traditions, cultures, and ways.
In the summer of 1967, Tijerina and his followers decided to do something about it.
The local district attorney had tried to thwart the Alianza protests and meetings, and several members had been arrested and placed in the courthouse in the small and sleepy town of Tierra Amarilla
On June 5, Tijerina and his supporters stormed the courthouse. They hoped to free the members and to place the district attorney under a citizen’s arrest. Instead, they found that the district attorney wasn’t there — and that the members had already been freed.
The raid generated international headlines and a flurry of bullets in New Mexico. Two law enforcement officers were wounded, with one of them dying. And things were about to get only more intense.
The Alianza demonstrations and marches earned national and even international attention. Indeed, after the raid, all hell broke out. Major General John P. Jolly quickly deployed the New Mexico National Guard, with its troops and tanks and armored vehicles rolling into Tierra Amarilla. A squadron of fighter jets at the nearby Kirtland Air Force Base was placed on alert.
A panic swept the state. Peaceful residents and demonstrators alike were handcuffed and arrested and placed into livestock corrals. Warmongers believed that New Mexico was on the verge of a revolution, to secede from the United States. Tijerina was touted as the most hated man in America, and the most massive manhunt in the history of the United States was begun to track him down.
Tijerina was eventually convicted in a series of trials. But he remained committed to his beliefs and his methods. As he once told the New York Times, “The cricket had no chance against the lion, so he jumped into the lion’s ear and tickled him to death. That’s what we’re going to do to the United States — we’re going to tickle [it] to death.”
Want to learn more? Check out the book New Mexico’s Stolen Lands: A History of Racism, Fraud, and Deceit as well as its similar titles at arcadiapublishing.com!
The Golden Age of Hollywood, between the 1910s and 1960s, was a period when Hollywood experienced an influx of experimental film making. These were revolutionary years, filled with exceptional talent, new camera technology and more freedom for script writers.
Today, we’ve curated a list of books we think you would enjoy based around who your favorite actor was back in the day. Put on your most fabulous (but comfy!) bed jacket, fix yourself a Tom Collins, and cozy up to one of these reads that’ll take you back to a glamorous time…
Katharine Hepburn
Actress Katharine Hepburn
Though Hepburn was born in Hartford, she and her family spent much of their time at the family estate in Old Saybrook, CT beginning in 1912. When the house was destroyed by the hurricane of 1938, she and her brother collected her mother’s 85 piece silver set from the sand and began to rebuild. In Old Saybrook, she was just a neighbor, Kate. She retired there in 1997 and a museum in her name stands in the town today. To learn more about her hometown, we recommend the titles below. You can find these books here and here!
Gregory Peck
Actor Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in La Jolla, CA in 1916 and attended San Diego High and later the University of California at Berkeley where he became interested in acting. Peck’s father was La Jolla’s first pharmacist. Peck returned to La Jolla often during his life and co-founded La Jolla Playhouse in 1947. To learn more about where he grew up, we recommend these titles below. You can find these books here and here!
Lauren Bacall
Before she was an icon of film noir (and Bogie’s), Lauren Bacall grew up Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx and later moved to Manhattan where she was crowned Miss Greenwich Village in 1942. A 53 year resident of the famous Dakota Building on the Upper West Side, she spent free time walking her dog in Central Park whenever she got the chance. To read more about her New York neighborhood, we recommend checking out these titles below. You can find these books here and here!
Rock Hudson
Born in Winnetka, IL in 1925, Roy Herald Scherer, Jr. attended New Trier High. After enlisting in the Navy in 1943, he was sent to boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago. When he was discharged in 1946, he moved to LA where he started his acting career and became Rock Hudson, one of the most popular movie stars and heartthrobs of all time. Find out more about his hometown with these books below. You can find them here and here!
Spencer Tracy
Two-time academy award-winning actor, Spencer Tracy began his life in Milwaukee, WI. Raised Catholic, he attended St. Rosa’s Parochial School, Marquette Academy, Northwestern Military Academy (Lake Geneva), and Ripon College. He won one of those two Oscars for playing Father Flanagan in Boys Town (1939). Read more about where he grew up with these titles below. You can find these books here and here!
It’s no secret that there was drama between two of the most famous actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The climax of the Davis/Crawford decades’ long feud is demonstrated in the 1962 film, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. The plot goes something like…
Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) is an aging child star left to care for her wheelchair-bound sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), also a former child actress. Stuck living together in a mansion in old Hollywood, Blanche plots to get even with Jane for the car crash that left her crippled years earlier…
Certain violent scenes made the audience question how much of the on-screen drama was actually real and gave this low budget film (at a time when the careers of these two legends were on the decline) a huge publicity boost. Davis earned an Oscar for her portrayal as Baby Jane Hudson and Crawford, determined to upstage Davis, made sure that she secured a spot on stage by accepting Anne Bancroft’s award in her absence.
The setting of the Hudson household was in an old Hollywood mansion (much like the ones in Homes of the Hollywood Stars). Want to learn more about where they grew up? Read these titles below! You can find these books here, here, and here!
We have a number of writers here at Arcadia Publishing, most of whom have enjoyed the excuse to decline social gatherings to write more. As a homage to the writers of the past, here are eight books that highlight literary history that we think you’ll enjoy. Read on for Hemingway’s history and regional works!
1. Hemingway’s Sun Valley: Local Stories Behind His Code, Characters and Crisis
It was a cold, “windless, blue sky day” in the fall of 1939 near Silver Creek. Ernest Hemingway spent the morning working on his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Local hunting guide Bud Purdy attested, “You could have given him a million dollars and he wouldn’t have been any happier.” Educator Phil Huss delves into previously unpublished stories about Hemingway’s adventures in Idaho, with each chapter focusing on one principle of the author’s “Heroic Code.” Huss interweaves how both local stories and passages from the luminary’s works embody each principle. Readers will appreciate Hemingway’s affinity for Idaho and his passion for principles that all would do well to follow. You can find this book here!
2. Ernest Hemingway & Gary Cooper In Idaho: An Enduring Friendship
In the autumn of 1940, two icons of American culture met in Sun Valley, Idaho—writer Ernest Hemingway and actor Gary Cooper. Although “Hem” was known as brash, larger-than-life and hard-drinking, and “Coop” as courteous, non-confrontational, and taciturn, the two became good friends. And though they would see each other over the years in Hollywood, Cuba, New York, and Paris, it was to Idaho they always returned. Author Larry Morris celebrates the story of that unforgettable friendship. You can find this book here!
3. Edith Wharton’s Lenox
In 1900, Edith Wharton burst into the settled summer colony of Lenox. An aspiring novelist in her thirties, she was already a ferocious aesthete and intellect. She and her husband, Teddy, planned a defiantly classical villa, and she became a bestselling author with The House of Mirth in 1905. As a hostess, designer, gardener, and writer, Wharton set high standards that delighted many, including Ambassador Joseph Choate and sculptor Daniel Chester French. But her perceptive and sometimes indiscreet pen also alienated potent figures like Emily Vanderbilt Sloane and Georgiana Welles Sargent. Author Cornelia Brooke Gilder gives an insider’s glimpse of the community’s reaction to this disruptive star during her tumultuous Lenox decade. You can find this book here!
4. Monroeville: The Search For Harper Lee’s Maycomb
For 39 years, people from all over the world and all walks of life have come to the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, in search of a place called Maycomb. Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb explores the relationship between Harper Lee’s hometown and the setting of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Included are photographs of the Lee family and the author in her early years; the sights of Monroeville that undoubtedly inspired the setting of Maycomb; the cast of the Oscar-winning film adaptation that premiered in 1963; and the Mockingbird Players, a group of Monroeville residents who, each year in May, present an authentic production of the two-act play adapted by Christopher Sergel. You can find the book here!
5. Literary Excursions in the Southern Highlands: Essays on Natural History
Extending from Roanoke to Mount Oglethorpe and bounded by the Appalachian Mountains, the Southern Highlands is one of the most diverse natural areas in North America. From beautiful flora like the Fraser magnolia to rare ecosystems such as the mountain cedar glades, the area has been an inspiration for writers and naturalists since it was first explored by William Bartram in 1775. Essayist, poet, and naturalist George Ellison explores the abundant wonders of the Southern Highlands in a series of humorous, scientific, and literary essays vividly illustrated by artist Elizabeth Ellison. You can find this book here!
6. Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren
The Volunteer State has been a pioneer in southern literature for generations, giving us such literary stars as Robert Penn Warren and Cormac McCarthy. But Tennessee’s literary legacy also involves authors such as Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor, who delayed writing his first novel but won the Pulitzer Prize upon completing it. Join author Sue Freeman Culverhouse as she explores the rich literary heritage of Tennessee through engaging profiles of its most revered citizens of letters. You can find this book here!
7. Michigan Literary Luminaries: From Elmore Leonard To Robert Hayden
From Ernest Hemingway’s rural adventures to the gritty fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, the landscape of the “Third Coast” has inspired generations of the nation’s greatest storytellers. Michigan Literary Luminaries shines a spotlight on this rich heritage of the Great Lakes State. Discover how Saginaw greenhouses shaped the life of Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Theodore Roethke. Compare the common traits of Detroit crime writers like Elmore Leonard and Donald Goines. Learn how Dudley Randall revolutionized American literature by doing for poets what Motown Records did for musicians. Join author Anna Clark as she unveils Michigan’s extraordinary written culture with a mixture of history, literary criticism, and original reporting. You can find this book here!
8. Literary Philadelphia: A History Of Poetry & Prose In The City Of Brotherly Love
Since Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin put type to printing press, Philadelphia has been a haven and an inspiration for writers. Local essayist Agnes Repplier once shared a glass of whiskey with Walt Whitman, who frequently strolled Market Street. Gothic writers like Edgar Allan Poe and George Lippard plumbed the city’s dark streets for material. In the twentieth century, Northern Liberties native John McIntyre found a backdrop for his gritty noir in the working-class neighborhoods, while novelist Pearl S. Buck discovered a creative sanctuary in Center City. From Quaker novelist Charles Brockden Brown to 1973 U.S. poet laureate Daniel Hoffman, author Thom Nickels explores Philadelphia’s literary landscape. You can find this book here!
