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:
Many Oregon towns, when bypassed by the railroad, withered into tiny hamlets — but one of them built its own railroad instead
Two liquored-up Navy deserters planned to (a) seize control of a passenger liner; (b) drive it onto the beach; and (c) steal away into the night with three tons of gold. It's probably safe to say they didn't think their plan through very well.
Oregon was once known as a place full of "great liars" — tellers of tales so tall they'd cause every pair of pants in the room to spontaneously burst into flame. Central Oregon storyteller Reub Long could hold his own with the best of them.
The battle lines were drawn in Portland that day: A group of Victorian ladies in their Sunday best, versus a rough, pugnacious and slightly crazy saloonkeeper. It was hymns and prayers vs. water hoses and firecrackers. (MP3 audio, 20:13.)
Tiny Willow Creek became a wall of water, swept away a third of the town and killed 247 people; one out of every 6 Heppner residents died that day. It was the worst non-dam-related flash flood in U.S. history.
Driven from Oregon's Willamette Valley by the spring rain, James Marshall likely would have been happier if he'd stayed
Edward Dickinson "Ned" Baker was a close personal friend of President Lincoln and a formidable public speaker; had he not been killed, he might well have become president. Without his influence, Oregon would likely have sided with the South.
Clackamas County man claimed his father had bought the salvage rights in 1908, setting off a huge dust-up among residents, beachgoers and politicians, who scrambled to protect the landmark wreck. He almost got away with it, too.
Lit up from stem to stern like a torch, the wooden steam schooner J.Marhoffer slammed into the rocks after its crew pointed it landward and abandoned ship; its rusty boiler is still visible at low tide
A group of kids from a lost wagon train found some strange yellow rocks in 1845, three years before the Gold Rush hit. Miners have been looking for the kids' play spot ever since.
Perhaps thinking the Benton County Treasurer would have treasure in his office, they blew the safe with dynamite — and were disappointed. A month later, having left pawnshop claim stubs lying around camp, they were busted.
When astronaut Jim Irwin came to Bend for lunar landing training in the lava rock of Oregon's 'moon country,' he made friends with a local resident — who gave him a sliver of Oregon lava to leave on the moon's surface. And so he did.
A magazine article written by legendary Oregon writer Stewart Holbrook in the mid-1920s, based on his experience as a young man working on railroad logging crew. A wonderful picture of life in one of those logging camps during fire season.
Clark Gable and other Golden Age Hollywood notables went there to 'disappear' from Hollywood now and then — and, earlier, it was a place for cowboys to crash
State regulators didn't care, so neither did some dairy farmers, who left dead cows to rot among their dairy herds and brought milk to market in the same cans they used to slop the hogs; Portland led the nation in baby deaths as a result.
