Requiem for a People

Urling Coe came to the new town of Bend, Oregon, in 1905, a young medical school graduate seeking adventure and opportunity in the West. Frontier Doctor, Coe`s autobiographical account of his thirteen-year residency, details the extraordinary experiences of a young physician in frontier Oregon and offers a vivid social history of town and ranch life on the Oregon high desert. His memoir also documents the development of a western town: with the arrival of the railroad in 1911, the wide-open settlement known as Farewell Bend was transformed into an important metropolitan center. In a new introduction historian Robert Bunting shows how Frontier Doctor adds to our understanding of the region`s past and present. Coe`s informed opinions and observations illustrate many of the newer topics in western history, such as conservationism, environmental change, the urban West, women and family issues, the West`s multicultural character, and westerners` ambivalent relationship with the federal government. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.