Episodes
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He called himself James Cook, and spoke with an English accent. But when asked about his past, he spun fanciful and ever-changing stories full of world travels, tiger hunts, shanghaiings and the like; he went to his death a total enigma. (The Dalles, Wasco County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1710b.john-cook-international-murderer-of-mystery-464.html)
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WPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with Minerva Thessing. Ms. Thessing grew up near Milwaukie in the 1860s and was friends with some of Oregon's most famous pioneer characters, from Ben Holladay to Abigail Scott Duniway. She also seems to have had a knack for psychic matters. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001996/ )
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Missing episodes?
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The engines that went into these old-school boats were slow, heavy, primitive, and built in one of several factories in San Francisco. In fact, until the mid-1930s San Francisco Bay was the Detroit of the marine-engine industry; the Union Gas Engine Company, est. 1885, was one of the very first manufacturers of gasoline engines of any kind in the U.S. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1880-1920) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912d.west-coast-fishboat-engines.html)
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Crook County citizens finally decided they'd had enough of the secretive lynchings and killings; they banded together and defeated the gang of masked riders without a single shot being fired. (Prineville, Crook County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1212a-prineville-vigilantes-defeated-without-a-shot.html)
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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) (Prineville, Crook County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1211d-lynching-kicked-off-vigilante-rule-in-prineville.html)
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After Columbia Lightship broke its lines and drifted ashore, the salvage bid was won by a house-moving company from Portland — which, rather than trying to pull the stranded ship off the beach, built a road, trucked it over the peninsula, and launched it in Baker Bay. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1710a.lightship-saved-by-house-movers-463.html)
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On any list of Oregon “firsts,” there’s one name that almost never pops up - Dr. Adaline M. Weed.
Which is understandable, because although Dr. Weed was the first female physician in the Oregon Territory, she was not a “regular” doctor – she was a hydropathist, a practitioner of “water cure.” Maybe that's why, today, when asked who the Oregon Territory’s first female physician was, most people who think they know the answer (including, until just last week, me!) will say, “Bethenia Owens-Adair, in 1874” — and be wrong. (Salem, Marion County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912c.dr-adeline-weed.html) -
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. (Salem, Marion County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1211c-asylum-kitchen-mixup-killed-hundreds-with-scrambled-eggs.html)
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She had a record of uninhibited and acerbic writing; she was preparing what appeared to be a super-racy tell-all memoir; and she had just secured a divorce from a prominent community member about whom they’d all heard some pretty tantalizing rumors. What was not to like? (French Prairie, Marion County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909d.margaret-bailey-oregons-first-authoress-2of2-566.html)
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MARGARET JEWETT BAILEY WAS not only Oregon’s first author of novel-length fiction, she was also the West Coast’s first published female author, and its first female newspaper journalist. She was also one of the most colorful characters of a remarkably colorful age. She could be absolutely savage when she felt the situation called for it ... and, in fairness, it has to be admitted that her situation seemed to call for it rather a lot. (French Prairie, Marion County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909c.margaret-bailey-oregons-first-authoress-1of2-565.html)
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WPA writer William C. Haight's oral history interview with Joseph Stangler, a 62-year-old veteran of James J. Hill's railroad building workcrews who was reinventing himself as a concrete artist. This oral history is a fascinating glimpse into the life and work of one of the wandering workmen who lived a hobo-ish lifestyle, riding the rails and working odd jobs, in the last decade or two of the 19th century. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001949/ )
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AS EVERY SENSIBLE person knows, there is pretty much no such thing as being “cruel to be kind.” Sometimes it does work the other way around, though. Every now and then you run across a story in which someone did something that was intended as a kindness, but turned out to be anything but.
Such a case happened in the office of Oregon Governor Oswald West, sometime in 1912. It had to do with a little shooting scrape that Z.H. Stroud, an acquaintance of West’s, had gotten into in the little frontier town of Harney City, where he was the town marshal.
Reading between the lines of the story, it’s clear that the governor’s well-intentioned intervention was probably the worst thing that could have happened to Marshal Stroud, and precipitated the closest thing Oregon history has to Arizona’s famous O.K. Corral gunfight. Which, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, the lawman lost.... (Harney City, Harney County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-04a.1107e_os-west-pardons-gunfighter-marshal.html) -
The grand monument to the Gilded Age 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. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1211b-pioneer-courthouse-square-once-palatial-hotel.html)
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New York schemers sought to have former Oregon governor and Senator Joseph Lane named President. Had they succeeded, the Civil War likely would have been the North seceding from the South, and possibly an independent Pacific Republic in the West. (Salem, Marion County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1412c.318.president-joseph-lane.html)
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THERE’S NOT A WHOLE LOT going on these days in the Eastern Oregon community of Jordan Valley (pop. 181). But 100 years ago, this tiny, remote hamlet was home to a racetrack that may have been the fastest in the Northwest. (Jordan Valley, Malheur County; 1890s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909b.horse-racing-jordan-valley-homer-davenport-564.html)
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WPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with Cyrus Woodworth, a retired banker and former telegrapher living in Salem and Portland from the 1870s to the 1930s. He actually organized one of the first car races, a match between two 'merry Oldsmobile'-era horseless carriages that reached a top speed of 18 miles an hour. This also includes an account of an actual tar-and-feathering incident! (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001962 )
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ESPECIALLY IN THE LATE 1800s, the Oregon frontier was no stranger to acts of judicial lynching – where the local legal system was corrupted to provide cover for murder. What’s more unusual, though, was an 1852 event that amounted to judicial cattle rustling.
The cattle that the Benton County courts rustled belonged to a woman named Letitia Carson, and she was the widow of a recently naturalized Irishman named David Carson — or, rather, she would have been David’s widow, if the two of them had been allowed to marry. But they weren’t, because Letitia Carson was black, and a former slave — born in Kentucky in the late 1810s.
The other factor that makes this episode of judicial rustling unusual is that Letitia took the thieves to court — and won. Twice. (Corvallis, Benton County; 1850s, 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912b.letitia-carson-fought-racist-neighbor-in-court.html) -
Wall Street financial wizard Thomas Lawson happened to be in town and betting on Prineville. With Silver Lake up 9-0 halfway through, he knew just what to do: Buy the other team a round of drinks ... or two, or three .... (Prineville, Crook County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1211a-thomas-lawson-mccall-boozy-baseball-fixer.html)
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Asa Mead Simpson came out West for the Gold Rush, but he soon learned there was more money in the timber that blanketed its hills than would ever be scratched out of its rapidly dwindling gold mines. (North Bend, Coos County; 1850s, 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1412b.317.asa-simpsons-empire.html)
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