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Nathan Pedersen

Nate Pedersen is a librarian, writer, and historian in Idaho. He is the Silverstone Branch Manager with Meridian Library District.  Before relocating to Boise, he was a Community Librarian with Deschutes Public Library in Bend, Oregon and served on the board of directors for the Deschutes County Historical Society and Museum.  Nate also works as a freelance journalist, with publications in a variety of newspapers and magazines. He is the co-author of the book Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything (Workman: 2017).  After growing up in Minnesota, he completed his education at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he earned a B. A. in Anthropology and an M. A. in Library and Information Studies.  His website is http://natepedersen.com

Author's Entries

  • Barlow Road

    The Barlow Road is a historic wagon road that created a new route on the Oregon Trail in 1846. Until the road was opened, the overland portion of the Oregon Trail effectively ended in The Dalles. Mount Hood, and the Cascade Range in general, was an insurmountable obstacle …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Bend Amateur Athletic Club Gymnasium

    The Bend Amateur Athletic Club Gymnasium, also known as the Old Bend High School Gym, is located at 520 Northwest Wall Street in Bend. Once the cultural and recreational heart of the city, the building survives as the center for the Boys and Girls Club of Central Oregon. The gymnasium, …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Burns

    Located in Oregon’s High Desert, Burns is the county seat of Harney County, the largest county (in physical size) in Oregon. The town is thirty miles north of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and Malheur Lake in the Harney Basin, near Steens Mountain and the Steens Mountain Wilderness area, and …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Enterprise

    Enterprise, the county seat of Wallowa County, is situated at the northern end of the Wallowa River Valley, the traditional homeland of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of the Nez Perce. White resettlers first arrived in the valley in 1872, seeking areas to graze their cattle, despite the Wallowa River Valley …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Frank T. Johns (1889-1928)

    Frank T. Johns of Portland was the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) presidential candidate in the 1924 and 1928 elections. Shortly after receiving his party's nomination in 1928, Johns drowned in the Deschutes River in Bend in an effort to save the life of a boy who had fallen into the …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Goodwillie House

    The Goodwillie House, commonly known as the Allen-Rademacher House, is the only extant example in Deschutes County of an early Craftsman bungalow. Located at 875 Northwest Brooks Street in Bend, the house was built in 1904 and survives as a bicycle shop, a ski shop, a coffee shop, and …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Heppner

    Heppner, the self-styled "Gateway to the Blues," is located on Oregon Highway 74 on Willow Creek between the Blue Mountains and the Columbia River Gorge. The agricultural town is the county seat of Morrow County, and its historic County Courthouse was used as a refuge for residents fleeing  a catastrophic …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Joseph (town)

    The town of Joseph, situated at the base of the Wallowa Mountains at the southern edge of the three valleys of the Wallowa River, is the cultural and tourism center of northeastern Oregon. The striking beauty of the town’s natural surroundings lent it the nickname Little Switzerland of America. That …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Klondike Kate (1876-1957)

    Kathleen Eloisa "Kitty" Rockwell—also known as Klondike Kate, the Belle of the Yukon—was a vaudeville singer and dancer who made her name and fortune on the saloon stages of Dawson, in the Yukon, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush. Rockwell later settled in central Oregon, residing for many years in …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Last Blockbuster Video Store in the U.S.

    At its height in 2004, the video rental store chain Blockbuster had over nine thousand locations in the United States. By summer 2018, that number had dwindled to one—in Bend, Oregon. Hit hard by the rise of video streaming services, DVR (digital video recorder) technology, and alternative DVD delivery models …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • O'Kane Building

    The O'Kane Building, at 115 Northwest Oregon Avenue in Bend, was built by Hugh O'Kane in 1916. Designed by the Beezer Brothers of Seattle, the O'Kane building is the best representative of early modern commercial buildings in Bend and was the first to be built with reinforced concrete. At 100 …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Ontario

    Ontario, the largest city in Malheur County, is on the Snake River near the Oregon state line. As the first city that people encounter when crossing into Oregon from Idaho on Interstate 84, Ontario has adopted the slogan "Where Oregon Begins." Although Oregon Trail pioneers crossed the Snake River about …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Prineville

    Prineville, the county seat of Crook County, sits on ceded land once belonging to members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, displaced by the Treaty of 1855. The town is located on the Crooked River at the mouth of Ochoco Creek in the Crooked River Caldera. It is …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Union

    With roots stretching back to 1862, Union is situated on Catherine Creek at the southern edge of the Grande Ronde Valley. The town was strategically sited for the transfer of freighted goods being moved between the Columbia River and the mining districts of eastern Oregon. Union, the City of Victorian …

    Oregon Encyclopedia