Tinged With Gold: Hop Culture in the United States

Today hop growing remains a viable commercial enterprise only in parts of the far western United States--notably in Washington. But as James Fenimore Cooper remembered the mid-nineteenth century in Cooperstown New York was a time when "the hop was king and the whole countryside was one great hop yard and beautiful".In Tinged with Gold Michael A. TomIan explores all aspects of hop culture in the United States and provides a background for understanding the buildings devoted to drying baling and storing hops. The work considers the history of these structures as it illustrates their development over almost two centuries the result of agrarian commercialism and nearly continuous technological improvement. In examining the context in which the buildings were constructed Tomlan considers the growth cultivation and harvesting of the plant; the economic social and recreational activities of the people involved in hop culture; and the record of mechanical invent