Wallis Nash

Born in England in 1837, Wallis Nash trained and worked as a lawyer before traveling to Oregon in 1877 to investigate opportunities in railroad building and land development. After returning to England, he wrote about what he had seen, and his best-known book, Two Years in Oregon, grew out of those early experiences and observations.

Nash later settled in Oregon and became active in public and business life there. Oregon State University sources describe him as a Benton County lawyer and entrepreneur, and note that he served on the initial Board of Regents for Oregon Agricultural College, later Oregon State University; other university records identify him as secretary of the Board of Regents in the late nineteenth century.

He died in 1926. Today, Nash is remembered less as a literary figure in the narrow sense than as a sharp-eyed chronicler of Oregon and a writer whose books offer readers a firsthand look at settlement, promotion, and everyday life in the American West.