First runner-up, History category, 2012 New York Book Festival.Honorable Mention, 2012 San Francisco Book Festival.Honorable Mention, 2012 Hollywood Book Festival.Everything you really need to know about the American West happened in Gaston, Oregon.OK, that's an exaggeration, of course. Some of it happened as much as 10 miles outside of town.The Oregon Trail, unquenchable thirst for water, federal land giveaways, the railroads, Native Americans, the timber industry, farming, grandiose goals of visionaries ... it all happened in Gaston. Wild West shootouts? Got 'em. Ghost stories, too. Bootleggers and brawls, dastardly deeds and Utopian dreams. Of course we had a gold rush, too.But where you find winners you'll find losers. The Indians, of course, but also the Chinese and Japanese. Most of the visionaries eventually saw their dreams die, sometimes in spectacular disaster. Nature has taken a beating, and so has the working man.In the Great Depression, Gaston watched as the Tillamook Burn threatened its very existence and then was the battleground for class warfare waged by a rich, out-of-control former Army General. In World War II, internment ripped apart Gaston's rich Japanese culture and the Japanese military placed a bulls-eye on the town. After the war a hometown "spy" touched off an international incident and a former Nazi leader moved to town. Oh, and we also have monsters and psychic ghosts and salacious love triangles and UFOs. Even cannibals.Peel away the humble fa#65533;ade and you'll discover the secrets of how the West was really won and lost, all right here in Gaston Oregon.It's all told by Ken Bilderback, winner of honorable mention at the 2011 New York Book Festival for Wheels on the Bus: Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll and Life in 1974.