Offbeat Oregon History podcast
Summary: A daily (5-day-a-week) podcast feed of true Oregon stories -- of heroes and rascals, of shipwrecks and lost gold. Stories of shanghaied sailors a1512nd Skid Road bordellos and pirates and robbers and unsolved mysteries. An exploding whale, a couple shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. From the archives of the Offbeat Oregon History syndicated newspaper column. Source citations are included with the text version on the Web site at https://offbeatoregon.com.
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- Artist: www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com)
- Copyright: Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (all commercial use OK)
Podcasts:
While the gunsmoke and horsefeathers were flying behind the auction house, legendary Oregon cowboy's lawyer was buying his wife's farm back from the government for a song.
Legendary governor, a staunch prohibitionist, had to buy a round for the house at the town marshal's saloon in the now-ghost town of Harney; a few years later, he pardoned the marshal, who'd been busted for gunfighting.
Created to stifle Indian culture, the oldest surviving Native American boarding school has done the opposite — and it's fortunate for Oregon's cultural heritage that it has.
Governor Sylvester Pennoyer, an irascible populist and an unapologetic racist, was by far the most colorful chief executive the Beaver State has ever had; he especially relished feuding with sitting presidents in Washington, D.C.
Two boys, asked to watch over the deceased on a dark and windy night in the 1890s, are terrified when the 'corpse' starts making noises
Jean-Baptiste "Pomp" Charbonneau, the baby born to Sacagawea during the Lewis and Clark expedition, is one of the most important figures in Oregon history — but we know almost nothing of his life.
The old Portland shanghai scene's 'original gangster' was a mysterious character. Did he really inherit $30,000? If not, where did the money come from?
Like the hero of an 1800s "cautionary tale," teenager Joseph Swards stepped off the ship, fell in with bad company, got caught up in a robbery that went horribly wrong — and in the end was lucky he wasn't hanged.
Crook County citizens finally decided they'd had enough, banded together and defeated the gang of masked riders without a single shot being fired.
In Crook County, the early 1880s were like something out of a Louis L'Amour novel: Masked riders galloping around by night, dispensing what they saw as justice. It all started with the lynching of an innocent man. (Part 1 of 2)
Sent downstairs to fetch a pan of powdered milk, a kitchen assistant at the Oregon State Hospital dipped his scoop into the wrong bin — and brought back six pounds of roach poison. It was mixed into the eggs and fed to 467 people.
Civilian volunteers retrieved debris from the Japanese submarine-launched seaplane bombing of the forest near Brookings —including an intact, unexploded bomb. Only later did they realize how lucky they were that it really was a dud.
After finding a battered lifeboat washed up on shore from a fatal shipwreck, Joel Munson made it his life's mission to use it to start a life-saving service. Today, his creation soldiers on, as part of the U.S. Coast Guard.
The palatial Hotel Portland was a municipal architectural treasure and hosted U.S. presidents, but was razed in the 1950s to make way for a parking garage; all that remains is a wrought-iron rail.
Dozens and dozens of mercury-laden purgative pills invented by Founding Father Benjamin Rush were an indispensible part of the Corps of Discovery's kit; the toxic-but-effective tablets helped explorers cope with a very-low-fiber diet.
