Jen Corrinne Brown was known as WSU Libraries\u2019 \u201cfishing girl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She spent hours in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections working on her dissertation in 2012, debunking fly-fishing myths about the Rocky Mountains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m just a storyteller at heart,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI want to tell stories that people think are interesting or might not know about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fly fishing for rainbow, brown, and brook trout was popular in the West, but little did fishermen know that these trout were first introduced into the environment as non-native species from hatcheries. Brown said this impacted dam construction, conservation, and native species like the cutthroat trout. When cutthroat and rainbow trout mated, they could not reproduce, which caused the cutthroat trout population to plummet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Questioning what is considered natural drove much of Brown\u2019s research as an environmental historian, she said. It combined the Montana native\u2019s love of the natural world and fishing, leading to her first book, \u201cTrout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n As Brown worked on her book, she fished in the Madison River. It was a chilly morning, and the sun peeked out from the clouds overhead. She marveled at the wild, undeveloped river where few other people were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh my God, this is why I\u2019m writing my book because it\u2019s just so amazing,\u2019\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown also loves digging into archival materials and interviews from a different place and time. She said there is much more to learn from resources like WSU Libraries\u2019 Gallup Collection<\/a> compared to simply researching online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Housed in MASC, the collection holds about 20,000 volumes on fly fishing, angling, and the environment. Brown said one can learn about the environment\u2019s evolution from the 1400s to present day across multiple languages and cultures from this \u201ctreasure trove,\u201d which is valuable for future fishery managers, environmentalists, and historians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a rich, world-class collection, and I was really honored to be able to research it when I did my dissertation,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n