Offbeat Oregon History podcast

EVERYONE IN THE tiny Harney County town of Westfall knew something bad was going to happen after City Marshal Asa Carey was fired for the second time. Carey had been an odd pick for city marshal, but maybe he'd been given the job because he wanted it badly — and Carey was a dangerous man to say “no” to. Basically, he was the “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” of Westfall ... right down to the “.32 gun in his pocket for fun,” about which more in a red-hot minute. And the town council really should have known better. This was not Carey's first time being entrusted with the town marshal's baton. His first term in office had gone a long way toward demonstrating to everyone in Westfall that giving the “meanest man in the whole damn town” a badge was bad for business. In fact, Carey appears to have been one of the main reasons the town had a regional reputation as a nest of hooligans. In 1906, while serving as marshal, Carey had gunned down fellow Westfall resident Frank Cammeron in a fight. He was acquitted on a plea of self-defense; but three years after that, he got in a fistfight with 80-year-old Dan Brady and beat the frail octogenarian to death. Both of these little incidents had made headlines statewide. The Brady incident appears to have been the point at which the town council replaced Carey as town marshal, ending his first term of office by appointing a hardware-store clerk named Ben Corbett to the position. Doubtless the town's business leaders breathed a sigh of relief. But 'Bad Bad Asa Carey' wasn't going to go quietly .... (Westfall, Malheur County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2502c.westfall-gunfight-asa-carey-689.515.html)

Bafflingly, the Coast Guard's biggest rescue boat on the Columbia River Bar was one that hadn't been designed to survive a rollover. So, in early 1961, it didn't — and neither did five members of its six-man crew. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201d-triumph-coast-guard-disaster-2.html)

Mammoth seas on the legendary Columbia River Bar, plus the untimely removal of a vital piece of life-saving gear by short-sighted military brass, cost the lives of five Coast Guardsmen that night. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201c-triumph-disaster-coast-guard-columbia-bar.html)

Alfred Belding targeted his wife's family with murderous rampage, shot at his young son, and tried to claim “temporary insanity.” It didn't work ... and neither did his crackpot plan for a prison break. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1804e.UL-alfred-belding-murderer-493.html)

On the evening of March 23, 1964, Seaside resident Margaret Gammon hadn't been asleep more than an hour or two when she was awakened by howling. It was the community fire siren, blaring at full blast without stopping. She looked at the clock. It was 11:30 p.m. “I lay in bed thinking to myself, ‘Why doesn't that fellow at the fire station get his big thumb off the siren button so we can all go back to sleep, and let the firemen take care of the fire?'” she recalled later, in an article for Oregon Historical Quarterly. “In just a few seconds the cars started zipping up our street toward the highway like the devil himself was on their tail. I thought it must be a tremendous fire, so I figured I'd get dressed and go watch it.” It didn't take long for Gammon to learn that it wasn't a fire. It was a tsunami — and it was almost upon her. (Oregon Coast; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/22-06.tsunami-1964-610.html)

AROUND 6 A.M. on the morning of Sept. 9, 1942, Forest Service lookout Howard Gardner heard the sound of an approaching airplane. Peering out into the South Coast pre-dawn gloaming light, Gardner made out a small seaplane, heading toward him, flying low, circling. Showtime! This was what Gardner was here for, bundled up in the little Forest Service firewatch lookout shack atop Mt. Emily. Nine months into the Second World War, Gardner's duties had expanded a bit from what they had been a year before. Now he was looking not only for smoke from forest fires, but for enemy airplanes. And right then, that's exactly what he was looking at. (Brookings, Curry County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2402a-0907b.glovebox-bomb-031.634.html)

Captains are supposed to be the last to leave their sinking ships, not the first. But that required act of valor has always been easier said than done — as evidenced by the story of the 1903 wreck of the S.S. South Portland off Cape Blanco. (Off Cape Blanco, Coos and Curry county; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1203a-steamer-captain-named-poultroon-of-the-sea.html)

Willamette Valley town's mascot was the state's wealthiest housecat; he owned City Hall along with the farm it was built on, as well as an iconic red barn. Today, you can visit Kitty Kat's grave, but his barn has been moved to a new place. (Tangent, Linn County; 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201b-kitty-kat-owner-of-city-hall-richest-cat.html)

Created and priced as a luxury line to compete with coal-fired steam trains, the railroad collapsed rapidly after automobiles came on the scene. Would a cheaper, less opulent service have survived? (Willamette Valley; 1900s, 1910s, 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1612b.oregon-electric-rise-and-fall-421.html)

They found the grizzled prospector's body slumped over a sample of ore on the floor of the rude log cabin he'd been staying in, deep in the wilderness of southern Oregon, late in the spring of 1897. He'd apparently dropped dead one evening while assaying out the samples he'd gathered that day – probably poisoned by some of the chemicals he was using. But this wasn't just any random gold prospector. This badly decomposed body was all that was mortal of the most famous prospector of the American West ‑ and certainly one of the richest and most successful: Ed Schieffelin, the man who discovered and named the Tombstone mine in Arizona. And by the time Ed's body was securely buried under a tall miner's cairn near Tombstone, the hills near that cabin were already alive with eager prospectors following up on the “lost gold mine” legends that sprang up following his death. At least one of those legends is still bringing hopeful prospectors out into the hills of Southern Oregon today.... (Near Jacksonville, Jackson County; 1897) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-03.ed-schieffelin-prospector-lost-gold-tales.html)

The little company town was located smack in the middle of the country's most productive tree-growing land; so, in the 1980s, the company drained its lake, bulldozed it into a pile, torched it, and replanted it with trees. (Valsetz, Polk County; 1920s, 1950s, 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1611c.valsetz-company-ghost-town-418.html)

Canadian bootlegger gang tried to bust three rumrunners out of Lincoln County Jail; it probably would have worked if they hadn't tried to take the confiscated whiskey too ... (Toledo, Lincoln County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1809d.whale-cove-rumrunners-jailbreak-514.html)

In Whale Cove, Canadian rumrunners lost their boat engine at the worst possible time and ended up on shore. So they buried the booze, burned the boat, and tried to get away ... and got caught. (Depoe Bay, Lincoln County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1809c.whale-cove-rumrunners-shipwreck-513.html)

When the sheriff arrived to enforce the law, he brought with him a pro-temperance preacher from one of the local churches — whose presence seems to have sparked a murderous response from the man he'd come to arrest. (Plainview, Linn County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1611d.sheriff-murdered-in-liquor-raid-gone-bad-419.html)

From 1901 until the First World War, in the age just before movies became popular, Mayor George Baker's theater was the great shaper and driver of Portland's unique culture. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1803d.baker-stock-theater-in-portland-488.html)

PORTLAND'S RIVER VIEW Cemetery is the state's oldest nonprofit cemetery, founded in 1882 by three of Portland's most prominent citizens: Henry Corbett, Henry Failing, and William S. Ladd. All three of them are buried there — Ladd's grave in particular was the target of a bizarre raid by a gang of grave robbers 15 years later, but that's a story for another time. But the most visited grave at River View isn't one of them. It's not even the grave of an Oregonian. The name carved into the stone is Virgil W. Earp. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2401c-1009d_virgil-earp-090.631.html)

Legendary physician Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair was an unstoppable force battling to get a eugenic-sterilization law passed ... until she encountered the immovable object that was medical-liberty activist Lora C. Little. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1808d.lora-little-vs-bethenia-owens-adair-eugenic-sterilization-510.html)

Entrepreneurs figured out how to send power long distances for the first time in history; later, after a flood wiped out power station, they pioneered alternating-current transmission. (Oregon City, Clackamas County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201a-oregon-city-home-of-worlds-first-power-grid.html)

By 1899, when Samuel L. Simpson's drinking problem finally got around to killing him, he was essentially Oregon's poet laureate — the Stewart Holbrook of the 1800s. But thirty years earlier, he was just another fresh-faced lawyer, just out of Willamette University's law school. He'd moved to Portland to open his practice, and now he was sitting at his desk in his brand-new office in Portland, sipping a glass of rye and waiting for his first client to walk in the door. No one did. There were just too many lawyers in Portland in 1868. Fresh out of law school, with no social connections, Sam just didn't have a chance. But finally the door did open, and somebody stepped inside. It wasn't a client, though. It was one of the other residents in the boardinghouse he was staying in, a greenhorn from Chicago named Ted Harper. And Harper had a proposition: He wanted Sam to close up his law office and come to Southern Oregon with him. They would spend the summer hunting for a certain ruined cabin with an immense hoard of gold buried inside, deep in the wilderness south of Jacksonville, in a hidden valley boxed in by steep cliffs. Only problem was, Harper didn't know exactly where the valley was. It was possible that they'd search all summer and get nothing for their pains. But Harper did have a letter giving partial directions to the cabin, which his cousin — who'd built the cabin and buried the gold — had dropped dead in the middle of writing. Simpson agreed to the scheme. He was brand new in the law business, had no clients and very few prospects; a summer in the woods, a possible fortune – sure, why not? (Siskiyou Mountains, Josephine County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-05b.sam-simpson-lost-cabin-gold.html)

One of the most interesting and colorful Lost Cabin Gold Mine stories is the one told by frontier poet Sam Simpson, which supposedly took place in the hills south of Jacksonville in 1853. In this case, it's not a mine that's been lost — it's a vault: a small stone-lined crypt stuffed with millions of dollars' worth of freshly dug gold, and guarded by whatever remains of the skeletons of two long-dead men. (Siskiyou Mountains, Jackson County; 1853) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-05.sam-simpson-lost-cabin-gold.html)

SOMETIME IN MID-1956, Corinne Gunderson Stumbo of Wolf Creek opened her mail and found a bill from Douglas County for delinquent property taxes. It was only $1.50, but Corinne was a detail person. It bothered her that this had been overlooked. It bothered her more when she figured out what the bill was for. It was several years' taxes on a small strip of her family's land that the Oregon Highway Department had built Highway 99 on, eight years earlier. It seemed the state of Oregon, when it had moved the highway to its current location, hadn't bothered to buy the land first.... (Wolf Creek, Douglas County; 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2502a.stumbo-stand-vs-bureaucrats-687.514.html)

After the rumrunner ship Pescawah responded to an S.O.S. from a sinking steam schooner, the Coast Guard pounced, arresting the crew and rewarding their heroism with prison sentences. (Offshore, Clatsop County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see URLOFWEBPAGEURLOFWEBPAGEURLOFWEBPAGE)

The Frishkorn family lived with two boarders, who paid the rent in exchange for board. Then they found out the boarders expected something else, too ... a fight broke out — and was ended by the roar of a double-barreled shotgun. (Manhattan, Clatsop County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1807e.girl-defended-her-family-with-a-shotgun-506.html)

A poorly engineered jetty was installed at the mouth of Tillamook Bay that changed the ocean's currents, and over the following three decades the sea relentlessly scoured away the town. Today, no trace remains of once-thriving Bayocean. (Bayocean Spit, Tillamook County; 1910s, 1920s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1611b.bayocean-town-swallowed-by-the-sea-417.html)

A startup newspaper in Albany was determined to see Mattie Allison hanged, one way or another; and the townspeople were mostly convinced. But when her court case got started, the real story came out (Albany, Linn County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1803b.campbell-the-stalker-murdered-in-albany.486.html)

FAR AWAY FROM the Beaver State, in the backcountry of West Virginia by the Kentucky border, a man named Floyd Hatfield was the proud owner of a fine razorback hog. A distant neighbor, from across the Tug River on the Kentucky side, saw the hog one day, and claimed the hog was really his. He could tell, he said, by the distinctive notches in the hog's ear. Hatfield was enraged; the neighbor was basically calling him a thief, an insult that was, in the heart of Appalachia just after the Civil War, not to be borne. The neighbor took Hatfield to court, suing for the return of the hog, and lost. But the Justice of the Peace was Anderson Hatfield, a relative of Floyd, and the neighbor was convinced the fix was in. Now the neighbor was enraged too. That was in late 1878, and the dispute over the allegedly stolen hog blossomed out over the following 12 years into the most notorious family feud in U.S. history. The neighbor, as you have probably guessed by now, was named McCoy — Randolph McCoy. The Hatfield-McCoy feud ended with more than a dozen members of both families being measured for coffins, and a decade or so of prosecutions for murder. The stakes in the Lincoln City-Great Falls, Mont., feud, if it can be called that, are a lot less serious. In fact, the whole situation is the kind of thing that's just fun and funny. But the parallels are striking, and — now that nearly 150 years has passed since the last Hatfield-McCoy blood was spilled — amusing.... (Delake/Lincoln City, Lincoln County; 1940s, 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412d1006b.d-river-short-river-long-drama_681.075.html)

Talking fast and dreaming big, M. Penn Phillips blew into Christmas Valley like a tornado. His dreams never came true, but he left an indelible impression on northern Lake County. (Christmas Valley, Lake County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1808a.developer-penn-phillips-christmas-valley-dream-507.html)

Abigail Scott Duniway is remembered today as a journalist, a suffragist, and an intellectual powerhouse ... all of which would have surprised her: She expected to be remembered for the novels that, today, very few people realize she wrote. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1806c.abigail-scott-duniway-noveliste-500.html)

Everybody had gold in Jacksonville, and nobody wanted to pack it around, and the bank had no access to outside markets where it could be invested. So, instead of paying interest, they charged a storage fee on all deposits. (Jacksonville, Jackson County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1611a.jacksonville-where-bank-robs-you-416.html)

Corvallis/Toledo railroad tycoon T. Edgenton Hogg (pronounced “Hoag”) was always a little reticent about his past. Especially the Civil War part. To some extent, that was understandable. “Colonel” Hogg had fought with the Confederacy in the Civil War. His side had lost, so, sure — better not to talk about it, right? Nevertheless, the real story is so much more bonkers than that, that one wonders why the rumor-passers even bothered with making things up. His story was unearthed somewhat painstakingly by historian Clark, a faculty member at Central Oregon College (now Central Oregon Community College) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Clark compares the whole thing to a rip-roaring B-movie Western, and he is not even slightly wrong about that. (Toledo, Lincoln County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-04.colonel-hogg-war-record-robbery-on-the-high-seas.html)

What comes to your mind when I mention the name “Balch”? For most of us, it's the sordid, nasty tale of Danford Balch, the first Portland resident to be hanged for murder, a fate he earned in 1858 by reacting to his stepdaughter's elopement by chasing the young couple down with a shotgun and murdering his new son-in-law on the Stark Street Ferry (here's a link to the Offbeat Oregon article about that). And yeah, that's one way to make it into the history books! Half a century ago, though, most Oregonians would instantly recognize the Balch name from a more benign, and certainly a more important, historical character, who probably was distantly related to Danford — Frederic H. Balch, the author of what may actually be the most important and influential work of literature in Oregon history: a misty, mythical novel titled The Bridge of the Gods: A Romance of Indian Oregon, published in 1890. In part, the reason Frederic's name is so seldom recognized today is that he died young. The Bridge of the Gods was supposed to be Volume One of a six-part saga telling the story of the Oregon country. But tuberculosis claimed him when he was just 29 years old, leaving the great work unfinished. (Lyle, Washington Territory; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2501b.frederic-balch-bridge-o-gods-684.512.html)

A defeat in the Oregon primary, for candidate John F. Kennedy, would have sent the message that his Catholic faith was a deal-killer; a win would signify that it was not. The task of sending that signal fell to Oregon voters. (Statewide; 1950s, 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1806d.oregon-was-JFKs-make-or-break-election-501.html)

The miners believed Berry Way had murdered a man while robbing him. So they kidnapped the sheriff so he couldn't interfere, then empaneled their own DIY court of law, with the stated purpose of finding him guilty ... which, of course, they did. (Canyon City, Grant County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1806a.berry-way-perry-mason-paint-your-wagon-498.html)

Oregon's official state university got off to a rocky start, in part because in 1859 Judge Matthew Deady thought it was a bad idea to have one ... (Eugene, Lane County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1805d.matthew-deady-opposed-university.html)

Portlanders tolerated three years of strident calls for revolution and regime change, but when The Firebrand started saying mean things about marriage, the gloves were off. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1803c.firebrand-newspaper-shut-down-for-smut-487.html)

(NOTE: This episode is being posted two days early just in case we lose connectivity in the forecasted thunder/hailstorm later today.) Today, as travelers outside the Beaver State's borders know well, Oregon's roads are merely average, or maybe slightly above average, in terms of crowdedness and quality. Certainly other states tend to have more and wider interstate freeways. But you don't have to go too far back into the past to find a time when Oregon's highway system was something rather special. It's a legacy that goes all the way back to the dawn of motoring; when the Good Roads movement got started, it really took off in Oregon, starting in the early 1910s with the nationally famous Columbia Gorge Highway. But the true reason for the lion's share of Oregon's transformation into a midcentury motorist's paradise is much more prosaic: Our state was the first in the nation to levy a gasoline tax to fund its highway system. (Forest Grove, Washington County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2402b-0905b.oregon-highways-gas-tax-025.635.html)

Wild with grief over the death of one daughter, and convinced he had seduced her other daughter, Caroline Briggs attacked schoolteacher John Dalmater in front of his class, shouting 'Shoot the son of a bitch' -- and her son, who'd accompanied her, did so. This episode is being posted a day early just in case we lose connectivity in the forecasted thunder/hailstorm later today. (Kerbyville, Josephine County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1808b.caroline-and-david-briggs-UL-murder-508.html)

Printer George Himes saw the historical value of the everyday things around him, and although that made for some very unsuccessful publishing ventures, his collection is the heart of the Oregon Historical Society's archives today. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1870s, 1880s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1512b.george-himes-history-hoarder.html)

Fourteen thousand years ago, in a cold dry cave deep in the “Oregon Outback,” someone answered a “call of Nature” — leaving behind a hefty load that, today, is the oldest evidence of human habitation on the West Coast. (Fort Rock, Lake County; 1839s, 2000s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1610a.prehistoric-oregon-sandals-coprolites-411.html)

ONE OF THE most significant events in the history of the world took place in 1892, when a corrupt political hack named James Lotan managed to land a cushy government job as the head of the customs inspection service for the Port of Portland. Believe it or not, Lotan's landing that job led directly to Pearl Harbor and eventually Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and indirectly to the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe. Not bad for a small-time white-collar criminal in a tiny backwater seaport town on the far side of the world, eh? I realize you may be a bit skeptical of this claim. Bear with me while I unpack it and prove it to you, along with the strong possibility that most of us owe our lives and the continued existence of human civilization to James Lotan and the sleazy little band of well-heeled drug smugglers and human traffickers who worked with and for him, on the Portland waterfront in the early 1890s.... (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2408a-1202d.james-lotan-opium-king-661.161.html)

THE TOWN OF Long Creek developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s on the banks of Long Creek, one of the tributaries of the John Day River. It was, and is, a little north of the center of Grant County, a few dozen miles north-northwest of John Day and Canyon City. It was a prosperous little town, well positioned, and it grew relatively quickly to become one of the most promising settlements in Grant County, so much so that in 1891 the residents incorporated the town and started the process of trying to take over from then-fading Canyon City as county seat. But before anything could come of that, the town got flattened by the most intense cyclone in recorded Oregon history. And yeah, about that cyclone: One of the people who watched it descend upon the town gave what may actually be the earliest known eyewitness description of the creation of a “bomb cyclone.” ... (Long Creek, Grant County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412e.long-creek-bomb-cyclone_682.511.html)

For centuries, mysterious chunks of beeswax have been washing up on Oregon beaches. Scholars have finally learned, with about 99 percent certainty, that the ship it's coming from was the San Cristo de Burgos, a Spanish galleon that disappeared in 1693. (Nehalem Spit, Clatsop County; 1600s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1807d.beeswax-wreck-mystery-solved-505.html)

Passengers on the speeding liner said an incompetent crew and disappearing ship's officers contributed to a shocking death toll after the liner Alaska crashed onto the rocks in the fog; the captain blamed an “uncharted current.” (Portland, Multnomah County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1512a.alaska-shipwreck-368.html)

Taken to Ocean Park after being nearly killed in the wreck of the Glenmorag, William Begg was nursed back to health by Maude Taylor - who turned out to be the love of his life. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1804b.william-begg-lucky-shipwreck-glenmorag-490.html)

Back before World War II, when racism was still a mainstream attitude with little or no social stigma attached, Portland was not a very friendly town for Black people. It's not that way any more, of course. There's still racism; but the toxic race-hierarchalism that winked at lynchings and enabled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan — that, thankfully, is a distant and uncomfortable memory today. And one has to wonder how much of that transformation — not just in Portland, but around the nation — can be attributed to the influence of one man, a man still today widely known as “The World's Greatest Entertainer”: Sammy Davis, Jr. Davis came to Portland with his dance group, the Will Mastin Trio — composed of Davis, his father, and his father's best friend, Will Mastin — just after the Second World War. For a little while he was a regular in P-town's clubs and Vaudeville theaters. ... (Portland, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2404d-1111d.sammy-davis-jr-portland-story-149.646.html)

THE YOUNG U.S. Cavalry captain was getting a little frustrated. He was explaining to the short, fireplug-shaped German man with the serious mouth and commanding eyes why he really, really should turn around. It was the spring of 1855, you see, and the Oregon Trail had been going full steam for about a decade. The Sioux tribes, along with other Plains Indian tribes, had been nonplussed at first by the torrent of travelers, but by now they were really alarmed, and they had started attacking wagon trains. The German man was Dr. Wilhelm Keil, and he was the leader of a particularly large wagon train. Well, actually that wasn't quite true — the man who was leading the wagon train was Dr. Keil's 19-year-old son, Willie. But Willie was dead. (Aurora Mills, Clackamas County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2404b-1007c.aurora-colony-willie-keil-311.644.html)

Holed up on a nearby hillside clutching a stolen shotgun, local drunken rowdy Charlie Earhart held the whole town at bay until dawn, when he finally gave himself up; surprisingly, no one was killed. (Ione, Morrow County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511d.ione-all-night-gunfight-366.html)

Abusive husband Nathaniel Lamb probably didn't really plan to kill his wife, but when he aimed his rifle at her that morning, he clearly wanted her to think he did. That night, over supper, he learned the hard way how successful he'd been. (Oregon City, Clackamas County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511e.charity-lamb-murder-367.html)

ANYONE WHO'S DONE much driving around Oregon — especially along the coast — knows the state's bridges have a particular and distinctive style. That style is actually hard to put your finger on, isn't it? The bridges themselves are very different from one another. Many of them aren't even built with the same materials. The spectacular structure that soars over Coos Bay could not be much different in size, technique, and style from the elegant little archway that links Oregon City with West Linn; but even if you'd never seen them before, you could just look at either one of them and instantly identify it as an Oregon bridge. The common thread linking these classic Oregon bridges was Conde McCullough, the legendary bridge designer and engineer who led the teams that designed and built them. (Statewide; 1920s, 1930s, 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2407b-1111b.conde-mccullough-2of2-147.658.html)

CONDE MCCULLOUGH had a problem. Actually, let's restate that. The Iowa highway department, which McCullough worked for at the time (in 1914), had a problem; what McCullough had was an opportunity. His solution to Iowa's problem would, several years later, enable him to basically write his own ticket, and the name he would write on that ticket in the “destination” category would be “Oregon.” But at the time, that happy day was several years in the future and was far from certain. The problem the highway department was depending on McCullough to solve for them was a big one, and success was far from assured. The problem's name was Daniel Luten, and he was the founder and president of the National Bridge Company. And he was a patent troll — possibly America's first. (Corvallis, Benton County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2407a-1111b.conde-mccullough-1of2-147.657.html)

SEPT. 1, 1962, WAS an unusually sultry day for the north Oregon coast, and the little beachside resort town of Seaside was crammed with high-school and college kids. They had come from all over the state and beyond for a rowdy, high-spirited end-of-summer Labor Day beach-party weekend that had become almost like a tradition in the postwar years. Something was a little different this year, though. The crowd was larger than usual, for one thing. Actually, it was a lot larger. The first baby-boomers, born in 1946, were 16 years old in 1962 ... and there were a lot of them on the beach that day, and they were a bit wild. Something else that was different that year was the attitude of the Seaside cops. They were being noticeably more hard-nosed than they had been in years past. Seaside had elected a new mayor, Maurice Pysher, a 68-year-old former heating engineer who had retired to Seaside from Portland a couple years before. Pysher didn't like his new town's reputation as a place where kids could blow off steam, and he'd seen that they were getting noticeably rowdier year after year. He wanted visitors to Seaside to be quieter, more respectful, and less rambunctious. So he had fired Seaside's longtime police chief and replaced him with someone who would be more strict and firm about keeping things orderly. The crowds of college kids and high-school students who flocked to town for Labor Day had always been a little high-spirited, and the town's cops had learned to strike a balance with them. They'd be there if somebody really needed help, and they'd stop any actual vandalism or other criminal activity; but they wouldn't accost anyone on the street and hassle them for carrying an open beer, or ticket them for disorderly conduct for getting too loud around a beach bonfire. But, not any more. Today was the start of Labor Day Weekend, 1962. The crowds were enormous, the beer was flowing freely, and the cops had a new attitude. It wouldn't take long for that combination to explode into something close to a worst-case scenario for the town: the first  Seaside beach-party riot. (Seaside, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412b.seaside-riots-gidget-goes-berzerk-679.510.html)