Tom McAllister

Tom McAllister was an outdoor writer for forty years with the Oregon Journal and the Oregonian. After retiring in 1992, he became a naturalist/historian for fifteen seasons aboard Lindblad Expedition ships in Pacific Northwest/Alaska waters. As a native Oregonian his boyhood interests took him into the Audubon Society of Portland in 1938. He was a Forest Service Lookout, a Navy corpsman in the Pacific, a lake and stream surveyor, a trout stocker with a pack string of mules in the Cascades, and a wildlife biologist before his writing career. He’s a past president of the Oregon Geographic Names Board, Oregon Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, and The Flyfisher Foundation. Tom died in Portland on March 12, 2018. He was ninety-one years old.

Author's Entries

  • Diamond Lake

    “Gem of the Cascades” is how Diamond Lake is heralded by those who trout fish, camp, swim, hike, sail, bicycle, and boat there in the summer or who ski, snowshoe, and snowmobile its basin in the winter. The lake, at 5,138 feet elevation on the Douglas County side of the …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Sea Otter

    America’s introduction to the lucrative Pacific Northwest Coast fur trade occurred on August 10, 1788, when the sloop Lady Washington, under Captain Robert Gray, traded with local people for sea otter skins just north of Yaquina Bay. Four days later, Gray and his eleven-man crew entered Tillamook Bay flying …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Waldo Lake

    Located astride the backbone of the Cascade Mountains in the Willamette National Forest, Waldo Lake is a child of the sky, nourished wholly by rain and snow. The 6,700-acre lake is the second largest in the Cascades, after Crater Lake, and is the headwaters of the North Fork …

    Oregon Encyclopedia