May 21, 2009

Eastwood to debut Pioneer Picnic

book at Ritzville art show

A local author and historian has correlated years of history and folklore surrounding the Pioneer Picnics of old in his latest book set to debut this weekend during the Historic Ritzville Days Western Art Show.

Harland Eastwood’s latest volume of local history, Pioneer Picnic Days on Crab Creek, is an extensive collection of information gathered from personal interviews, photographs, research and intense study of organizational documents.

The book features more than 150 photographs of the famed area event, including some even the author was unaware existed. It retails for $34 including tax.

In 191 pages, Eastwood has chronicled Pioneer Picnic since its inception in 1891, through its heyday and expansion to the last event in 1941.

According to Eastwood, each chapter covers about a five-year span of events, including the early years when the event was ‘unorganized’ and not widely publicized to when the event moved from Crab Creek to Sprague, then to Ritzville and back to Sprague Lake.

Eastwood published his first mass-produced book, Ritzville Auto History, in 2004. Since then, he’s penned Mercantile Memories, Barracks Buddies of the 249^th, Ritzville Trading Co. 1904-1968, Wild West Saloons of Adams County 1885-1915, Herr Kanzler’s Kinder, Here Comes the Judge as well as articles in Nostalgia Magazine and the Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia.

He and his wife, Marilyn, currently live in the house his great-grandparents built in 1915 in Ritzville. The Kanzlers, German Russian immigrants, came to Ritzville by covered wagon in 1882.