Offbeat Oregon History podcast

Paddlewheel riverboats and fancy bordello girls seem like a match made in pop-culture heaven, don't they? Plush “parlour houses” and luxurious riverboats both were common in the “naughty nineties,” and both represented probably the closest thing to luxury a working man or woman would find in a frontier waterfront city like Portland or San Francisco, or even St. Louis or New Orleans. And yeah, there were times when the twain did meet in real life. Naïve farmboy Aquilla Ernest Clark was lured into the clutches of Portland shanghaier Larry Sullivan by a flock of beautiful, friendly ladies obviously hired for the purpose, who joined him and eight other victims on a chartered riverboat for what they thought was a “birthday party” cruise. (Here's a link to that story.) And who can forget Eliza “Boneyard Mary” Bunets, the 40-year-old solo practitioner who apparently entertained her customers aboard mothballed sternwheelers in the Oregon Steam & Navigation Co.'s “boneyard” at the foot of Flanders Street? (Here's a link to that one.) But the combination seems to have reached its peak in the case of a Portland madam named Nancy Boggs, who actually operated a bordello aboard a 40-by-80-foot barge anchored in the middle of the Willamette River, in the early 1880s.... (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2502b1007d.nancy-boggs-floating-bordello-688.120.html)

Klan-backed politicians won a big victory that they interpreted as a mandate for ethnic and religious cleansing, then found out the hard way that they'd misjudged the voters' intentions. (Statewide; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1304d-fall-of-the-house-of-klux.html)

The secret society of anonymous xenophobic vigilantes spread through Oregon society like a virus in 1922, and by the time elections were held that year, it was ready to seize the reins of power. But it wouldn't keep them for long. (Statewide, 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1304c-rise-of-the-ku-klux-klan-in-oregon.html)

How a sinister, secretive hate-group found acceptance in 1920s Oregon with its message of '100-percent Americanism' and pledges of a moral cleanup. But undertones of masked vigilantism were there from the very start. (Medford, Jackson County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1304b-ku-klux-klowns-kome-to-oregon.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)

The newlyweds, Alvin and Gladys, were on a little vacation at the Big Chief Auto Court in Truckee, Calif. — it may have been their honeymoon — when they went out together to the local cinema to see “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” It was September of 1946, so it was the old film-noir version starring Lana Turner. As you'll surely remember if you've seen it (or a more recent remake of it), this is a film in which Turner's character, Cora Smith, seduces a drifter named Frank and convinces him to murder her husband for her so that the two of them can take over ownership of his restaurant. After the film, Gladys was in a pensive mood as she turned to Alvin, the eager 23-year-old cowboy she'd married in Reno a day or two before. “It's too bad something like that can't happen to the doctor,” she remarked to him, innocuously. By “the doctor,” she meant Dr. Willis Broadhurst, a prominent Jordan Valley rancher and chiropractor — her other husband. Or, rather, one of her other husbands. At that particular moment, Gladys, a strikingly pretty and charismatic 40-year-old, was married to three different men, and there were four additional failed marriages in her rear-view mirror. If there was anyone for whom the wedding bells sounded like the alarm clock, it was Gladys. Or, maybe they sounded like funeral bells. Because less than a month later, Alvin actually did it.... (Jordan Valley, Malheur County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2503a.gladys-broadhurst-film-noir-murderess-691.516.html)

Although Oregon turned out to be harder for the Japanese navy to reach than folks thought, historian Bill McCash estimates the civilian plane-spotting service likely saved as many as 100 American aviators from dying in plane crashes. (Oregon Coast; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1705a.aws-eyes-on-the-sky-442.html)

South Lane and north Douglas counties felt their county seats neglected them and treated them as a tax-revenue milch cow. So they proposed seceding and forming a new county, Nesmith County. Eugene city leaders campaigned hard against the plan at the ballot box, and it was defeated. But a year or two later, the embittered south-county town got the opportunity to be revenged... and it was brutal. (Cottage Grove, Lane County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1704e.eugene-cottageGrove-feud-over-nesmith-county-441.html)

Part of the problem with owning and operating the only flight school in town in the 1920s and 1930s was, every time one of your students slapped together some home-built piece of kit, you'd be expected to help fly it. And 'help fly it' usually translated into 'go first.' (BEND, DESCHUTES COUNTY; EARLY 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1811b.ted-barber-diy-test-pilot-521.html)

Gasping for hard currency to finance the Civil War, and awash in raw gold from two Eastern Oregon gold rushes, the federal government tried to build a mint in The Dalles in 1863. But the Oregon delegation, dominated by Portland interests, would not stop trying to switch its location to Portland ... finally, the gold rush petered out, and the feds said, 'Never mind!' (The Dalles, Wasco County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1810d.the-dalles-mint-that-wasnt-519.html)

A recording of an on-air conversation with Bill Lundun and Gerry Snyder of the Wake Up Call on Eugene's KPNW Radio AM 1120. Topic: Reading between the lines of the story, it's clear that Governor Oswald West's well-intentioned intervention in pardoning his friend City Marshal Z.H. Stroud was probably the worst thing that could have happened to 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. (For the full story, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-04a.1107e_os-west-pardons-gunfighter-marshal.html)

AS LEWIS AND CLARK'S Corps of Discovery made its way across the continent to Oregon, the men (and woman) of the party probably weren't thinking much about their place in history. So they weren't taking any particular pains to document their every movement. There were, however, some particular pains they were experiencing, as a result of a relentlessly low-fiber diet: Everyone was constipated, all the time. Luckily, they had something that helped with that — a lot. The Corps of Discovery left on its journey with a trove of 600 giant pills that the men called “thunder-clappers,” which the soldiers and travelers used to jump-start things when they got bound up. And everyone used them pretty regularly. And, strange as it seems, that fact is why we know several of their campsites along the way. The main active ingredient in “thunder-clappers” was a mercury salt, which is a pretty stable compound. Archaeologists simply have to search for dimples in the ground — which is what old latrine pits often end up looking like, hundreds of years later, after Nature has partly filled them in — and take samples of the dirt in them. If it comes up with an off-the-charts reading for mercury, well, that's a Corps of Discovery pit toilet — and the layout of the rest of the campsite can be extrapolated with considerable precision by consulting the military manuals they used to lay out their camps. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1800s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2501d1006d_biliousPills-686.077.html)

Portlander Walter Waters arrived in D.C. at the head of 20,000 disciplined, well-intentioned petitioners to request that First World War vets be paid their service bonus early. Hoover refused to meet with him — a big mistake. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1704d.bonus-army-ended-hoovers-hopes-440.html)

Four states away from his family, with no living parents, young Carroll Beebe was like a walking, talking invitation to a shanghaiing. And when he checked into Bridget Grant's boardinghouse, she obliged. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1903c.carroll-beebe-shanghaied-539.html)

Once the finest residence in Oregon Territory, the John McLoughlin House also was once one of the most disreputable — so when history buffs set out to save it, they had to overcome some resistance (Oregon City, Clackamas County; 1840s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/22-09.mcloughlin-house-613.html)

Fresh from breaking out of jail in Utah, Harry Tracy apparently came to Portland looking for a fresh start; he married, and then for three years kept his nose clean. But, it seems, the call of the outlaw trail was too much for him to resist, and he was caught and sent to prison. His prison break, and the subsequent two-month manhunt for him, became legendary. (Salem, Portland; Marion and Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/22-10.harry-tracy-wild-west-outlaw-jailbreak-614.html)

Back in the 1800s, a fire on a riverboat was a very serious matter, and not as rare as you might think. Riverboats were made of wood and powered by steam boilers, so there was always a fire on board. If powered by coal, there was coal dust to worry about; if, in later times, by oil, the engine room was often soaked with flammable liquids. The stories of paddlewheel riverboats on American rivers are peppered with tales of fires breaking out on them and quickly surging out of control, and nearly all such anecdotes come with a body count. Oregon's most famous riverboat fire has a body count, too. It's 1. But it unquestionably would have been a lot higher than that, if not for the quick thinking and clear decisionmaking of its legendary skipper — and, probably more importantly, his instant unwillingness to gamble his passengers' lives to try and save his boat. THE BOAT THAT burned was a legend in its own time, and that  legend has only grown since. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2503d1111a.heroic-captain-scott-telephone-694.145.html)

The executives in charge of Henry Villard's Oregon Railway and Navigation Co. no doubt thought they'd played their cards very cleverly when they bought the little screw-driven riverboat Gold Dust in 1881. They could not have been more wrong.... (Cascade Locks, Hood River; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2503c1110e.steamboat-wars-uriah-scott-693.145.html)

READERS OF A certain age all over North America will remember a really excellent Canadian comedy-variety show called The Red Green Show, which had a 15-year run starting in 1990, starring Steve Smith as gravel-voiced handyman Red Green. Each week, Red would preside over the “Handyman Corner” segment of the show, in which he would do something ridiculous with duct tape and, usually, one or more rusty old cars. In one memorable episode from Season 14, Red made a DIY “mid-engine sports car” by sawing off the trunk of a rusty Mercury Grand Marquis, squashing the cabin flat, and duct-taping what remained onto the front of another car of the same model. The result was a remarkably ugly barge-shaped thing, about 50 feet long, which Red then hopped into and fired up, remarking proudly, “This isn't an old junker anymore, it's a fancy Italian mid-engine junker,” and adding his famous tagline: “If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!” Viewers and studio-audience members of Red's show probably felt, watching him drive off in this monstrosity, about the same way the executives of Oregon's two big riverboat almost-monopolies did back in 1874 while they watched an Ohio greenhorn's progress on the riverboat he was building. They watched, and they laughed. The executives were also, it seems clear, congratulating themselves for having had the good sense not to hire that “Red Green” type guy when he'd applied to them for a job a few months earlier. The Ohio man, whose name was Uriah B. Scott, had come to them almost as soon as he'd arrived in Oregon, asking for a job and babbling about “shallow-draft hulls” — as if their riverboats weren't already on shallow-draft hulls! What, did he think they ran a blue-water fleet or something? They were in for a big surprise.... (Canemah, Clackamas County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2503b1110d.uriah-scott-riverboat-genius-692.145.html)

Arguably, the outcome of World War II became inevitable on the day the S.S. Star of Oregon slid into the Columbia River. It was followed by a torrent of new ships — far more than the Nazis could ever hope to sink. (Vanport, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1612c.portland-liberty-ships-saved-canada-422.html)

DURING THE FIRST year of the Second World War, the conflict in the Pacific was all about aircraft carriers. With a carrier, one could take the fight to the enemy. Without one, one could only huddle on an island as a passive target, waiting for an enemy carrier's aircraft to arrive and attack. When the war broke out, the U.S. had seven of these precious warships, but only three were in the Pacific. They were the actual targets of the attack on Pearl Harbor — the Japanese knew if they could get them out of the way, they'd have a free hand for at least a year. It had taken an average of more than three years to build a regular full-size aircraft carrier before the war. Mobilization would cut that timeframe to under a year, but that was still a long wait. The Japanese almost had a free hand for that year anyway. Much of their equipment was just more advanced in 1942, especially airplanes. By the end of that year the U.S. was down to one carrier. Both sides were hurriedly converting existing ships to bolster their fleets, but it certainly looked, from far away, as if the U.S. was not too far from ending up in that helpless position that the Japanese had hoped to put it in with the Pearl Harbor attack. Carriers were rare, complicated ships, hard and time-consuming to build. Japan had lost four of their best ones at Midway, but they still had at least six left. And that's about the point at which Henry Kaiser decided to go into the aircraft-carrier business.... (Vanport, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/22-07.kaiser-aircraft-carriers-611.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)

Klamath County was about to move into a courthouse just outside town -- but downtown businesses, fearful they'd lose their status as county seat, fought the plan with every weapon they had ... and won. (Klamath Falls, Klamath County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1812a.klamath-courthouse-battle.html)

A recording of an on-air conversation with Bill Lundun and Gerry Snyder of the Wake Up Call on Eugene's KPNW Radio AM 1120, recorded in January of last year. The topic of conversation: Luther Cressman. He was a maverick anthropologist with an unimpeachable Ivy League background, a tenured faculty member at Oregon's flagship university, a former military man who did his fieldwork in an Army-surplus campaign hat with a big revolver on his hip in case he ran across a snake (he hated snakes) ... as far as I know, he never used a whip. But other than that, the parallels with Indiana Jones are quite striking. There's even an echo of Indy's love life in our man. In lieu of Marian Ravenwood, our candidate's love interest was a diminutive classmate four years younger than he — a fellow anthropoligist whom you just might have heard of. Her name was Margaret Mead. (For the full story, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-02.luther-cressman-oregons-indiana-jones-630.html)

AS OF THE time of this writing, it's election season, and some of us are being asked to approve bond measures for local schools. So, most likely I don't have to tell you that such debates can get pretty heated. We should count our blessings, though. Some Oregonians used to argue over this sort of thing with dynamite. More specifically, a few of the residents of the unincorporated hamlet of Mohawk did.... (Marcola, Lane County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2410c1003b%20ping%20yang%20school-672.065.html)

IMAGINE YOU'RE A gold prospector from the Willamette Valley, on your way to the California gold fields in the first year of the 1848 gold rush. You're a little late to the party, and you've chosen to try to reach the gold fields in a somewhat unusual way: By going over the Coast Range to the beach, and traveling south along the coast. As you make your way southward by the great ocean, you reach a broad expanse of black sand. And when the sun hits it just right, you can see it's actually glittering … with tiny flakes and grains of gold. You're all alone on the beach. There aren't even any other footprints. Apparently nobody else was crazy enough to try to travel to the gold fields via Coos Bay. Everyone else in the area, such as there are, has decamped inland to the gold fields. It's just you, on the uninhabited edge of a continent, crunching a trillion dollars' worth of gold under your feet.... (Randolph, Coos County; 1840s, 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/22-05.gold-on-the-beach-609.html)

Lumber magnate Simon Benson needed to get logs from the Columbia to his mill in Southern California, so he designed cigar-shaped log rafts a full acre in size. They were a familiar sight until the early 1940s. (Clatskanie, Columbia County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1202c-benson-log-rafts-built-city-of-san-diego.html)

So, what's the real story of Richard Brumfield? Even today, it's a remarkably unsatisfying account. There's plenty of evidence that Brumfield committed the murder — but there's also a bunch of evidence that makes no sense at all in that context. Why would a murderer mail a box of sexy panties to the exact place he planned to run away to, the day before an apparently premeditated crime? Was “Mrs. Norman Whitney” a real person, and if so, who was she? Did Brumfield have a second family in Calgary? Then, too, why would a man who's contemplating a murder like this use such a small amount of dynamite? Why would he stage the entire pageant on Pacific Highway, the most heavily traveled road in the area? Was there a second man involved in the plot, as the district attorney broadly hinted to reporters? Why was his wife so doggedly insistent that the burned corpse was that of her husband, when it was so obvious to everyone else that it was not? Was she in on it? And those suicide attempts: How many people, crazy or not, can cut two inches into their own throats with a dull instrument? How many can hang themselves from a bunk bed without help? If he had help, who could have provided it? It's possible that all these anomalies can be explained by Brumfield simply being an unhinged homicidal maniac, and yeah, maybe that's all there was to it. But looking back over the record at all the loose ends hanging off this messy little murder mystery, a person sure has to wonder. (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-06b.brumfield-murdering-dentist-mystery-part2of2.html)

On a warm summer's evening in 1921, Dr. Richard Brumfield loaded about a dozen sticks of dynamite into his snazzy red convertible and left Roseburg, headed for handyman Dennis Russell's tiny shack in the hills near Dillard. Dr. Brumfield had hired Russell to blast out some stumps from around a rural farm property he owned. At least, that's what he'd told Russell when he hired him. But, as it turned out, he was lying about that. What Brumfield really wanted to hire Russell for was to impersonate a corpse. His corpse.... (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-06a.brumfield-murdering-dentist-mystery-part1of2.html)

Legendary Coast Guard lifesaver took his brand-new rescue boat dangerously close to shore to save four drowning people; hundreds of people were watching and cheering, but USCG brass wanted to bust him for risking the boat. (Newport, Lincoln County; 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1202b-mcadams-legendary-coast-guard-rescuer.html)

Murderer Pleasant Armstrong said he had no idea what came over him. But a strange woman claimed, in court, that he was the victim of a family of murdering hypnotists. (Haines, Harney County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1805b.pleasant-armstrong-murder-495.html)

On December 6, 1977, a car pulled past the conspicuous “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog” signs at the perimeter of Arthur Allen's oceanside ranch, about ten miles south of Bandon. Three men got out and approached the house. Allen, who had obviously been watching them approach, promptly emerged from the house and ordered them off the property. “We're from the Bureau of Land Management,” one of them said. “We wanted to talk to you about negotiating to buy an easement across your land so visitors can access BLM property on the New River.” Allen relented and let the men approach the house, where he demanded to see their identification. Two of them promptly whipped out their wallets and showed their badges; the third, whose name was Larry Gano, said he'd left his wallet at home. It was a lucky break for Gano that Allen didn't push it. Because he wasn't with the BLM. He was with the United States Customs Service. And he was there because he was pretty sure Allen was running a smuggling operation. Spoiler alert: Oh yes, he was.... (Bandon, Coos County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-07.new-river-drug-bust.html)

A recording of an on-air conversation with Bill Lundun and Gerry Snyder of the Wake Up Call on Eugene's KPNW Radio AM 1120, recorded in January of last year. The topic of conversation ... the time, in 1906, when fed-up farmers dynamited the Oregon Iron and Steel Co.'s diversion dam on the Tualatin River that had flooded some of their fields, which the company had installed after promising to set up steamboat service on the river and then never followed through. (For the full story, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-01.tualatin-dam-dynamited.html)

In the early 1880s, visitors in the Klickitat Valley, just across the Columbia River from The Dalles and Biggs Junction, recalled seeing some very singular signs posted regularly along the right-of-way: NOTISE: All land in woods past Draper Springs is for Settlers cattle. No sheep is allowed. Sheep men take notise.    — Comitee By “Comitee,” it was clearly understood, the writer meant some sort of vigilance committee, a coalition of cattle ranchers and sodbusters who had come together to fight the encroachment of the flocks of sheep that seemed to be taking over the public rangeland. Similar signs, and “comitees,” were springing up all across the Columbia River basin. And over the decades to come, the problem would only get worse … and bloodier. Luckily, nearly all of the blood would be coming from sheep, not men. (Central and Eastern Oregon; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2401b-1009c.sheepshooters-089.630.html)

Crusty, spluttering city leaders, full of self-righteous outrage over mixed-race dancing that was going on at “The Dude Ranch,” found an excuse to order the West Coast's hottest jazz club shut down. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1203b-dude-ranch-portland-jazz-scene.html)

He “married” her to get title to her land claim, but then she found out he had another wife in Dufur, so she moved out. So he killed her and her mother and forged her signature on the land-claim deed. (Hood River, Hood River County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/index-all.htm#2011)

Western gambler and white-hat con man Deadwood Dick was the hero of dozens of dime novels in the late 1800s. But his New York author didn't really know much about the West ... and it showed! (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1805a.deadwood-dicks-danger-ducks-494.html)

Ask anyone to name a mythical Oregon creature, and you'll get a very predictable answer: Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch. The stories and legends of Bigfoot, the Pacific Northwest's reigning “hide-and-seek champion,” are vast and growing every year. Just a list of them, from 1945 to present, would be longer than this article. But Bigfoot is neither the only Oregon cryptid, nor the most plausible. There are others. And chief among those others is the Columbia Bar Sea Serpent. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-02.columbia-river-bar-sea-serpent-colossal-claude.html)

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)

They never did see any action against the Japanese spies and commando teams they expected. But the fact that they were on the job may have had something to do with the fact that none ever tried to come ashore. (Coast, 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1503c.sand-pounders-uscg-ww2-330.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)

Although he had done it, Return Everman stoutly denied having burgled Cyrenius Hooker's home. Hooker just as firmly accused him of the deed, and wouldn't stop talking about it. So Everman decided it would be best if he just went ahead and murdered him. “I would rather the news get home that I had killed a man for trying to injure my character, than for news to go home that I had stolen a watch,” he wrote later. (Dallas, Polk County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/22-08.cyrenius-hooker-murder-612.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)