Intrepid Italians in the West

Horace Greeley's famous phrase, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country", could very well apply to Italians. Let's explore that idea in this newsletter.

Forced to leave the economically disadvantaged and agriculturally overworked mezzogiorno of their booted homeland, many southern Italians ventured west. Between the late 1800s until the early 1920s, over 4 million Italians left Italy.

Most made their life along the Eastern Seaboard, but many left the crowded tenements and inner cities to build large enclaves in Chicago, New Orleans, and Winnipeg. Fewer still, moved further west, beyond the Mississippi River of the United States and the industrializing eastern provinces of Canada.

These brave souls sought adventure, freedom, and hopefully more opportunity, in the logging and mining outposts in the Pacific Northwest with about 12,000 Italians, mostly men, settling in British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

This site is dedicated to exploring their lives since the mass migration of the Gilded Age, and is an adjunct to my upcoming book, ITALIANS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST (Autumn 2023).