ABOUT
We are an independent bookstore, owned and operated by Hal and Betsy Hartzell. Kalapuya Books was born in 1997, a fledgling member of Cottage Grove's downtown Main Street community. We carry a broad spectrum of rare, new, and used books, as well as an eye-catching display of art; bookends of crystal, agate, and petrified wood; and locally crafted work tucked in throughout the store. Books on pioneer history and Native Peoples are of special interest, as are books on Buddhism, sustainability, metaphysics, and poetry.
We're located in the award-winning and historic Burkholder Woods Building, which we share with the Axe & Fiddle Public House. Together we appreciate being a community hub. We aim to be a hospitable venue, integral, comfortable, and authentic to the community as we inspire with a broad array of books and art.
About Our Name: Kalapuya Books is named as a tribute to the Kalapuya, First People on the land here which we now call home. They were caretakers, living skillfully and carefully in this area for untold years. The Nez Perce people, from the eastern side of the Cascades, are said to have acknowledged the Kalapuya as healers. The irony and sadness of this is that whole villages were struck and decimated by a devastating epidemic in the early 1800s, resulting in the near loss of a precious culture. Insult and loss of unbearable dimension is acknowledged. We stand on Native Ground.
About Betsy & Hal: Betsy has become the manager and community presence of Kalapuya Books. She raised children while locally homesteading off the grid. Hal authored two books: award-winning The Yew Tree: A Thousand Whispers, the biography of a tree, and Birth of a Cooperative, oral history at its best, recounting the formative years of a successful and unique worker-owned reforestation business, the Hoedads. Hal and Betsy both have been tree planters, Hal close to a million planted, and thus are part of a proud tribe. We were also participants in a small publishing business in the 1990s, with connections to the Grateful Dead and the fledgling worker-owned business movement. Out of that, Hal had the bright idea to parlay new books into old: thus was born Kalapuya Books on Main Street here in Cottage Grove, Oregon, a little town surrounded by forest and mountains. We would be nothing without the strong and generous community here and feel fortunate to have such support.