Eden within Eden: Oregon's Utopian Heritage by James J. Kopp (2009)

she shows and sells an intriguing variety of sculptures featuring such things as iron rebar twisted into graceful vines, and steel harrow disks torched tobring out subtle rainbows of color" (p. 123). For all its sharp portraits and shining prose, Adams County and Amber Waves and Undertow are ratherpredictable.Railroads then highways bypassed towns that subsequently shrank; some died while others hang by a thread.Mechanization increased farm sizes and moved families off the land. Outsiders arrived and gave ita try,either sticking itout and contributing theirown ideas and customs to the land ormoving on tonew lands or cities. Ifthese large trendsare unsurprising, so too is Turner's predilection forAdams County and itsresidents. It is,at itsroot, Jeffersonianin its celebration of the land and thosewho make their living from it.Also, Turner's preference embodies what Wallace Stegner famously celebrated as "stickers," thosewho put down roots and stayed, in contrast to the"boomers," who struck out whenever greener pastures beckoned. Those who are familiarwith rural tributesof suchwriters asWendell Berrywill no doubt findmuch familiarhere. Adams County denizens drew inTurner in the 1950s and today,and we are luckyfor that. For historians, thepast of such places is inher ently interesting.Accordingly, many readers of Oregon Historical Quarterly may well find Amber Waves and Undertow a memorable, fascinating account of a recognizable natural and human landscape. Many, however, may findAdams County and Turner's treatmentof it simply a well-written, well-worn story. In ending his chapter on Ritzville, Turner captures the essence of such places, and the conclusion can serve as a stand-in for the entire book: "The city will continue to take sustenance from itshistory.And the forceof thathistory will keep an essence ofRitzville intact,regard lessof changes" (p. 120-21). Indeed. Adam M. Sowards University ofIdaho EDEN WITHIN EDEN:OREGON'S UTOPIANHERITAGE byJamesJ. Kopp Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2009. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. 384 pages. $24.95 paper. The firstthingtonote about JamesKopp's esti mable surveyofOregon Utopian communities isthatthe main texttakesup lessthanhalfof the book's 384 pages. The restof thework consists of an exhaustive, 120-page guide to resources and 50 pages of notes and an index.While Kopp's summaryprovides general readerswith a solid,well-written introduction tohis subject, researchersandwriters are likelytofind thatthe book's greatestvalue is in itsresources section. Indeed, Kopp states thathis intent isnot only "to document what isavailable" but "toprovide a startingpoint for further information and research"on Oregon's communities (p. 187). He manages to pack a great deal into his summary, nevertheless. Early chapters analyze notions of Eden and Utopia from a historical perspective and discuss Oregon's firstUtopian endeavorswithin a broader nineteenth-century context ofU.S. involvementwith intentional communities. Kopp then works his way chronologically through the communities themselves (both actual and intended), starting with theAurora Colony in the 1860s and 1870s and endingwith the cohousing and ecovillage experiments of the twenty-first century. A pen ultimate chapter investigates the "dark side of Utopia" with a fascinating glimpse of theHoly Rollers and Rajneeshpuram. With somany communities examined in so fewpages, readers cannot expect detailed views of particular places. An inevitable weakness of thebook is that itdoes not givemuch of a sense ofwhat life was (or is) like inOregon's Utopian communities. Kopp isa historian and librarian,not a journalist (he isdirector of the Aubrey R.Watzek Library atLewis 8cClark Col lege inPortland). His interest, while personal, is scholarly. In fact,one gets the sense thathe isas fascinated by theprocess of documenting 636 OHQ vol. 110, no. 4 would-be communities? and in describing the source documents themselves ? ashe isby the actual communities and their residents. In chapter 5, for instance, Kopp explores the dream of Rev. John Sellwood to create Hopeland, an austere settlement where quar reling, dancing, and theatrical eventswould be forbidden and domestic animals were tobe strictlyconfined.Not surprisingly,the dream went nowhere. Later in the chapter,he details a desultory and futileattemptbyRalphWhite head to establish anArts and Crafts colony at Alsea inabout 1900. In chapter 6, thegrandiose plans of an early twentieth-centuryChristian cooperative community take up numerous pages, though this venture also never comes to life. These projects are intriguing,certainly, in the sense that they reflectsimilar...