The
Illahee
Apartments
BOOKMONGER
A decades-long land use struggle
‘For the Good of the Order’ focuses
on Washington state farming family
Many of us have rued the loss of trees and wild-
life habitat when chainsaws and bulldozers came
grinding in and yet another human development took
down green, wild places.
As good as it gets
in Downtown
Astoria!
1046 Grand Avenue
Astoria, OR 97103
503-325-2280
YOUR SUPPORT
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
Downtown Long Beach
306-642-4441
dylanscottagebakery.com
22 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
This week’s book
‘For the Good of the Order’ by Timothy W. Ransom
Gorham Printing — 346 pp — $29.95
“For the Good of the Order” tells a story with a
different kind of ending.
Author Timothy W. Ransom, now retired, served
on the staff of the Puget Sound Water Quality
Authority when he met the man who became the
focus of this book.
Kenny Braget was an embattled third-generation
farmer on the Nisqually River Delta, in the southern
reaches of the Salish Sea. For decades, real estate
speculators, port authorities, the U.S. Army, envi-
ronmentalists, and local, state and federal govern-
ments had ideas about what the land’s “highest and
best use” should be — and it wasn’t his family’s
legacy farm.
So like his parents before him, this determined
fellow — a dairyman by occupation and a duck
hunter at heart — did everything he could to slow
down the march of “progress” as defi ned by the
20th century. He bought the surrounding acreage of
other landowners who didn’t have the stomach for
the fi ght. He alternately cajoled and berated govern-
ment workers and elected offi cials.
Coming straight from doing milking chores at
the barn and still wearing his fl annel shirt, suspenders, muddy
boots and National Rifl e Association ball cap, he showed up
at a mind-numbing series of public meetings over the years to
harangue those trying to take away his farm and livelihood.
Ransom traces this stubborn farmer’s roots back a cou-
ple of generations, telling their stories too. Braget’s Norwe-
gian ancestors knew hardship and heartbreak when they fi rst
arrived in Tacoma in the 1880s. But by 1896, they purchased a
patch of Nisqually River Delta farmland. Ransom recreates the
family rifts, neighborhood squabbles and natural disasters that
tested them. He supplements these stories with dozens of family
photographs.
Ransom also details the more powerful and well-funded out-
sider forces that sought not just to seize the Braget family’s land
but to change the very character of that area in substantial ways.
Some nearby landowners wanted to expand facilities and ame-
nities for their duck hunting clubs, while others petitioned to use
the site for a garbage fi ll. The Port of Tacoma and Port of Olym-
pia thought the delta would be a great location for a superport.
Industrialists proposed siting an aluminum plant or an oil refi n-
ery there. The Army lobbied for expanding Fort Lewis down into
the Nisqually Valley. On the bluffs overlooking either side of the
delta, there were plans for expansive housing developments.
Eventually the federal and state government stepped in with
environmental restoration plans. But even then, the Braget farm,
with its dikes and cow pastures, was considered an obstacle.
To borrow a phrase from the book, life became one long liti-
gation for the Bragets.
Read this bittersweet tale to learn how Braget managed to foil
most of his foes, “For the Good of the Order.”
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes
this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publish-
ers of the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.
com