“My father was a sheepherder, and his home was the hills.” The opening to Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land resonates with so many of us, capturing not only the sheepherder life of his own father, but the experience of many Basque immigrants who made new homes in the American West. I discovered Laxalt’s books when […]
Thomas Jefferson. John Adams. Benjamin Franklin. George Washington. These are the founding fathers of what would become the United States of America. The Basque community in the United States has, in some sense, our own founding father. Along with his brother Bernardo, Pedro Altube was the catalyst of the Basques’ strong role in the livestock […]
Most of us who have Basque heritage in the western United States trace that connection to the Basque sheepherders that, in years past, dotted the entire western landscape. My dad came over when he was 18 years old, drawn by the promise of economic opportunity and his three uncles who were already here herding. These […]
The United States has a thriving Basque community, driven primarily, though not exclusively, by many years of immigration to the US West. California is the state that the most Basques call home while Boise, Idaho, is the city with the largest number of Basques. However, it is tiny Winnemucca in northern Nevada – with only […]
During the Spanish Civil War, particularly the years of 1936-1937, thousands of women and children, many of the latter without their parents, were evacuated from the Basque Country to a variety of countries, including the Soviet Union, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark. I’ll write about some of these others in the future. However, a key […]
It’s often easy to forget the role that France, and along with them the Basques from Iparralde, had in the history of North America. From Louisiana to Canada, Iparraldetarrak had an enormous hand in shaping the history of the continent. One dramatic example comes from Quebec, in which the grandson of a Basque military officer […]
It’s Super Bowl Sunday, the culmination of the National Football League’s season, which saw star quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, and Dak Prescott light up the field (yeah, these last two are on my fantasy football team, so I might be biased; and I’m rooting for the Bengals!). However, there’s another league, […]
One of the distinguishing features of Basque culture in the US West are the Basque restaurants. Often serving family-style meals, with long tables and large plates and bowls of food, they are the cornerstone of Basque-American identity. The Wool Growers, in Bakersfield, California, is one of these wonderful dining spots, a place for Basques and […]
A Basque doctor without borders The life of Gonzalo Aranguren Sabas as recounted by his grandson Gontzal Aranguren Laflin Gonzalo Aranguren Sabas (Bilbao 1903-Hondarribia 1974) was a man of many qualities worthy of mention and whose memory is his best legacy, not only for all his descendants but also for all those who associated with […]
Boise, Idaho, is one of the centers of Basque culture in the United States. The home of the Basque Block, which features the Boise Basque Center, the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, a fronton, the Basque Market, and the restaurants Bar Gernika and Leku Ona, it is also home to the Oinkari Basque Dancers and […]
