Offbeat Oregon History podcast

After Bethenia Owens divorced the frontier slacker she'd married at age 14, she went on to become one of Portland's most influential and respected professionals. (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/H1008c_west-coasts-first-woman-doctor-Bethenia-Owen.html)

Litter enraged outdoor enthusiast Richard Chambers, so he launched a one-man campaign to pass a deposit bill. Then Gov. Tom McCall leaped aboard, and Oregon became the first state to ban nonreturnable bottles and cans. (Pacific City, Tillamook County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1810c.1812.bottle-bill-tom-mccall.html)

They pedaled their bicycles from Portland to Astoria, snuck aboard a wrecked ocean liner, and spent the night marooned on board, with breakers crashing all around them. (Peacock Spit, Pacific County (Wash.); 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1812d.admiral-benson-shipwreck-summer-vacation.html)

The young man was the only person to have followed the Oregon Trail while dead, and it turned out to be fortunate for his family — and the Aurora Colony — that he did. (Aurora, Clackamas County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/H1007c_willie-keil-dead-man-led-wagon-train.html)

Extortionists, jailbreakers, safecrackers, jealous lovers and even truant students have, throughout the early years of Oregon history, found high explosives a powerful aid to their nefarious schemes. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1501d.crime-and-dynamite.html)

Award-winning criminal mastermind/ motivational speaker Blackie DuQuesne shares a few key insights for aspiring train robbers on how to avoid “n00b mistakes” on a railroad heist. (1890s, 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1501c.how-to-rob-trains-with-blackie-duquesne.html)

Just a few dozen years ago, nearly anyone in Oregon could easily get all the high explosives he or she might want — if not by buying it, then by mixing a few common ingredients together with some old sawdust. (Statewide; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1501b.dynamite-in-oregon-history.html)

Growing tension over rights to run livestock on Oregon's publicly owned rangeland led to the formation of the Izee Sheep Shooters, a secret society of cattlemen dedicated to the extermination of their animals' fuzzy rivals. (Grant and Crook County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/H1009c_oregon-cattleman-sheepman-war-had-10000-wooly-deaths.html)

Six-week-long drunken party was thrown by the notoriously rascally Jonathan Bourne Jr. to keep the state Legislature from convening, so it couldn't elect John H. Mitchell to the U.S. Senate. It worked — well, sort of. (Salem, Marion County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201e-bourne-40-day-party-stopped-legislature.html)

When con artist Harry Virtue learned of Dr. Richard Barber's heroic demise, he guessed no one would bother to tell medical authorities in the UK. So he went there -- and, stealing Barber's name, went into practice. (Gardiner, Coos County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1810b.1812.fake-doctor-impersonator.html)

Fans of the tiny Lincoln City waterway and partisans of the Roe River in Great Falls, Montana, still swap good-natured gibes and call each other’s rivers ‘drainage ditches.’ But the Guinness Book seems to have given up on them both. (Devil's Lake, Lincoln County; 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/H1006b_Driver.html)

The masked outlaw planned the job out carefully, and thought he was ready for anything. But he met his match in the cool-handed express man, and had to leave almost empty-handed. (Saginaw, Lane County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1501a.saginaw-train-robbery.320.html)

If the idea of cable car service to Timberline Lodge strikes you as a not particularly bad one, you’re not alone. Over the years since the Wyler group proposed the glass-and-steel mountaintop skyscraper, several proposals have been floated for cable-car service up the mountain. So far, only one has been built, and it was an immediate and colossal failure: The Skiway Tram project. (Mount Hood, Clackamas and Hood River Counties; 1920s, 1930s, 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-08.timberline-lodge-skiway-bus.html)

In September, deranged housewife Emma Hannah gunned down a dangerously sexy neighbor she suspected of making moves on her husband; then in November, 18-year-old Lloyd Montgomery had a temper tantrum and murdered his parents. (Jordan and Brownsville, Linn County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1810a.1812.montgomery-murder.html)

Desperate for men, shanghai artists once tried to kidnap the local Methodist minister. He turned out not to be as soft a target as they'd anticipated. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1203d-astoria-once-hotbed-of-shanghaiing.html)