Frederic Homer Balch

Frederic Homer Balch (1861—1891) was an American author from the Pacific Northwest, best known for The Bridge of the Gods: A Romance of Indian Oregon, the only work published during his brief life. Balch was the first Northwest writer to make Native Americans major characters and the first to celebrate the Northwest landscape, its primal forest, great rivers, and volcanic mountains.

Balch died of tuberculosis at 29 years old. During his life he wrestled with constant poverty, a lack of formal education, and the paradoxical isolation of the frontier wilderness whose scenery he extolled. While probably still a teenager Balch had a clear authorial vision: "To make Oregon as famous as Scott made Scotland; to make the Cascades as widely known as the Highlands;...to make the splendid scenery of the Willammette the background for romance full of passion and grandeur."