Pacific Historical Review

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Pacific Historical Review has been asking the same essential question since 1932: what does it mean to move west, and what happens once you arrive? Founded under editor-in-chief John Carl Parish, this quarterly academic journal set out to document America's long reach toward the Pacific and everything that followed. It is the official publication of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, and University of California Press has carried it ever since. The questions it planted at its founding still drive each issue: how did the American West take shape after the frontier closed, and who gets to tell that story?

• 2. A Journal's Scope

  ›

  American expansion to the Pacific is not a tidy subject, and the journal has never pretended otherwise. The Review covers the history of that expansion and then follows it further, into the ocean and beyond the continent's edge. It also takes seriously what came after the frontier period ended, devoting sustained attention to 20th-century developments in the American West. That dual focus, the outward push and the settled aftermath, gives the journal a wider lens than most regional history publications. Each issue includes an extensive section of book reviews and frequent review essays, making it a consistent guide to the broader field of western and Pacific history.

• 3. Editors Who Shaped It

  ›

  John C. Parrish led the journal from its founding in 1932 through 1936, establishing its early direction. Louis Knott Koontz took over from 1936 to 1947, carrying it through the disruptions of the war years. John Caughey then held the editorial chair from 1947 to 1968, the longest unbroken stretch of the journal's mid-century history. Norris Hundley, Jr., served from 1968 to 1996, a nearly three-decade tenure that saw the field of western history transform dramatically. David A. Johnson, Carl Abbott, and Susan Wladaver-Morgan shared editorial duties from 1997 to 2014. The current editor is Marc Simon Rodriguez of Portland State University.