Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Making Lives, Changing A Landscape: An Environmental History Of The Tualatin Valley, Washington County, Oregon, Camille A. Cope

Geography Masters Research Papers

Sheltered by mountains on all sides, the 724-square mile Tualatin Valley has been home to successive groups of people who have shaped the landscape based on their needs, tools, and ideas about the human relationship to nature. Thousands of years of indigenous burning practices and cultivation of native plants, followed by two centuries of European-American fur trapping, agriculture, logging, and urbanization have created the Tualatin Valley landscape of today. Understanding how a history of changing land use has affected the region is integral to building an environmentally sustainable future.