Offbeat Oregon History podcast

Miner William Aldred, traveling to a rumored bonanza in Idaho with five dozen other miners, found two gold mines on the way — but couldn't get the other miners to stay with him to work them. Luckily, one of the two mines was still unclaimed on their return. (Prairie City, Grant County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907e.prospectors-turned-backs-on-two-fortunes-558.html)

WPA writer William Haight's oral history interview with Miss Etta Crawford, wealthy and cultured member of frontier Oregon's social elite and political activist, recalling her girlhood days in Portland shortly after the Civil War. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001943/)

“From 1861 to 1876, every man committed to the Oregon State Penitentiary for ‘life’ either escaped or was pardoned,” writes historian and newspaper columnist Erik Bromberg, quoting from the U.S. Federal Writers Project’s “Oregon Oddities” article of 1939-1941. “Some who escaped were recaptured and then pardoned.” (Oregon Territory, 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1910c.frontier-justice-jailhouses.html)

Cyclones, tornadoes, flash floods, earthquakes and volcanoes — the Beaver State is not immune to any of these things, but they're rare enough that no one is expecting them when they appear. (Statewide) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1210b-deadly-weather-usually-catches-oregon-by-surprise.html)

“Ethelbert” the orca somehow ended up stranded miles from the ocean in the Columbia Slough, much to the delight of most Portland residents. But it wasn't long before the city's would-be Nimrods came out and spoiled everything. (Columbia Slough, Multnomah County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1411a.311.ethelbert-portlands-whale.html)

No one in Tillamook County even suspected the “Lee Film Company” was a front for government Prohibition enforcement until the trap was sprung ... but it has to have been the most expensive law enforcement operation in the county's history. (Tillamook County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907d.lobster-trap-for-bootleggers-557.html)

WPA writer Walker Winslow's oral history interview with William Huntley Hampton, a son of Brigham Young although not a Mormon, who was probably Oregon's second most famous mining engineer around the turn of the Twentieth Century (behind Herbert Hoover). He invented the process of hydraulic fracking, worked for the Bureau of Mines for years, and was one of the preeminent authorities on gold mining. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001957/)

On the morning of Nov. 25, 1881, two men were walking to work along the North End waterfront when they saw something incongruous in the river, just off the foot of Everett Street ... a pair of feet, sticking straight up into the air. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1990s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1910a.carrie-bradley-2of2.html)

The Femme Fatale, like most really satisfying tropes in fiction, is based on real life. And arguably, the closest Oregon has ever come to a real-life femme fatale worthy of Hammett’s pen was in early 1880s Portland, in what today is known as the Tenderloin — in the person of a gorgeous, hard-eyed 28-year-old brunette who called herself Carrie Bradley. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1882) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909e.carrie-bradley-femme-fatale-1of2-567.html)

In a race with Portland neophile Henry Wemme to be the first owner of an airplane in Oregon, Cornell-educated John Burkhart was two weeks too late; but unlike Wemme, he designed, built and flew his own machine. (Albany, Linn County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410d.310.burkhart-aviation-pioneer.html)

The geographical evidence isn't there; but every nearby Indian community has legends about the river tunneling underground for miles, and roughly similar accounts of the tunnel's collapse. What are the odds? (Near The Dalles, Wasco County; circa 1450 A.D.) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907c.bridge-of-the-gods-legend-and-truth.html)

Young Charley Imus was the son of the local undertaker, and he and a school friend were tasked with watching over a corpse while an Irish wake was going on, as the wind howled in the shingles on a stormy, spooky night. Imagine the boys' consternation when the 'corpse' ... woke up. Apparently the wake worked! (Interview conducted on Feb. 24, 1939. For the source documents, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001939/)

IN THE SUMMER of 1981 a little action-adventure movie titled Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, and fans have been speculating ever since on who the character of Indiana Jones might be based on. The most popular speculation — Vanity Fair magazine goes so far as to opine that he is “almost certainly” the basis for Jones — is Roy Chapman Andrews, a globe-trotting paleontologist and former director of the American Museum of Natural History. Well, the fact is that Jones probably wasn’t based on any real person. Indy is the brainchild of George Lucas, the Star Wars guy. Lucas was a serious fan of pre-war pulp-magazine fiction, and the adventure pulps back in the day were full of characters like Indiana Jones. But then again maybe he WAS based on a real person, because in the era Jones was set in, the real world was full of those characters too. Oregon, too, has a couple candidates it could field as potential proto-Indiana Joneses.... (Fort Rock, Lake County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-02.luther-cressman-oregons-indiana-jones-630.html)

This was the town where the Eastern Oregon Gold Rush of '61 got started, and it was a wild and lawless place; town ordinances did prohibit stabbing or shooting people “in public places,” but otherwise the town was mostly wide open. (Auburn, Baker County; 1860s, 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1210a-auburn-wildest-mining-town-vanished.html)

On the bright side, though, the owner of the Desdemona did get to go down in history — or, rather, geography — after the deadly sandbar that took his ship was dubbed Desdemona Sands. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410c.309.desdemona-shipwreck.html)

Up-and-coming Democrat Oswald West had been sent to Portland on a last-ditch attempt to talk Harry Lane into running for governor. But Lane said no; so West decided to give it a go himself. (Salem, Marion County; 1910) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907b.os-west-banana-peel.html)

Fans of shanghaiing-era waterfront culture will not want to miss this WPA oral history, collected in 1938. Retired fisherman Charles deLashmutt recalls stories of gillnet salmon fishermen 'corking' each other, brawling in bars, and buying hooch from the 'whiskey scows' that anchored 30 feet off the Washington shore and served cheap booze at 'paddle-up windows' for thirsty customers. Mr. DeLashmutt was a piano player in a dance band, so he saw plenty of barroom activity. This one, collected by Sara B. Wrenn, is short but full of good stuff (meaning mostly bad stuff, but good history!). (For text and PDFs, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001973/)

TIME NEVER WAS on the U.S.S. Oregon’s side. She was launched in 1896, in the middle of a remarkable period of torrid innovation and development in the history of warships, a time when ship designs were only good for about ten years before something better came along. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1910b.battleship-oregon.html)

“Patriotic Jeffersonians intend to secede each Thursday until further notice,” the rebels said, and played their parts in the grand production to a nationwide audience as newsreel cameras rolled and reporters scribbled in notepads. (Port Orford, Curry County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410b.308.state-o-jefferson-part2.html)

Boisterous and colorful man P.R. man Gilbert Gable, mayor of Port Orford, drew on the frustrations of the West Coast's remotest counties in an effort to get the state to invest in decent highways. (Part 1 of 2 parts on the 1941 Jefferson 'secession') (Port Orford, Curry County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410a.307.state-o-jefferson-part1.html)