History Pub - Subscribe Now! How the West Was Written

McMenamins presents History Pub

Subscribe Now! How the West Was Written
Presented by Travis E. Ross

Spanish Ballroom
McMenamins Elks Temple
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
7pm/doors 8pm
All ages welcome

In the 1880s, California publishing tycoon Hubert Howe Bancroft invested a fortune to write the history of western North America. With personal stories contributed by the public and a staff of uncredited research agents, Bancroft produced a 39-volume subscription series released quarterly in 800-page books that laid the bedrock of western regional history. Historian Travis E. Ross retraces the incredible lengths Bancroft and his agents went to realize his ambitious and lucrative plan to sell 10,000 subscriptions.

In our 21st century, it’s easy to take for granted the assumption that knowledge about everything must already exist. But how did we get here? Join us as Travis E. Ross investigates rare evidence of the “history of history” and the Gilded Age for-profit subscription industry that morphed into the mainstream historical record (for good or ill).

Travis E. Ross is an award-winning historian and technologist focused on the intersection of knowledge and capitalism during moments of rapid disruption. Currently an Assistant Professor of History at George Fox University, Ross completed a PhD in history at the University of Utah and a postdoctoral fellowship in informatics at Yale School of Medicine and the West Haven VA Medical Center.

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