Finn J.D. John

"Offbeat Oregon:" Unusual stories of historic Oregon ... suggestions welcomed.

Image: silvertonbobbie.com##Bobbie the Wonder Dog perches on the trunk of the Braziers’ Overland Red Bird touring car in Silverton.

Offbeat Oregon: Most famous Silverton resident wasn’t Clark Gable; it was a dog

Up until his untimely death from a fall in 1937, Rogue River Wilderness mountaineer and mule-train driver Hathaway Jones enjoyed a reputation as the “damnedest liar” in all the West Coast states ...

Oregon Historical Society##One of the original car-window stickers that was supplied to new members of the KGW Order of Hoot Owls.

Offbeat Oregon: ‘Hoot Owls’ show changed radio history nationwide

In the decade and a half before the Second World War, the radio business was the hottest ticket in American business. It made vast fortunes for business moguls, and considerable wealth for performers and ...

Image: Sannyas Wiki##A Buddhafield Transportation bus brings sannyasins to Rajneeshpuram past the marble welcome sign.

Offbeat Oregon: 'The Rolls-Royce Guru’ came to Oregon / Part 4, Unraveling

After the election, the new formerly homeless residents of Rajneeshpuram were the most pressing problem for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers. They cost a lot of money to feed and house, and they ...

Image: Ted Quackenbush##The town of Antelope as it appeared in the summer of 1985, after the Rajneeshees had taken control.

Offbeat Oregon: ‘The Rolls-Royce Guru’ came to Oregon / Part 3, Occupation

In the courtyard at the Antelope Post Office today, there stands a large bronze plaque attached to the base of a flagpole. It reads, “Dedicated to those of this community who throughout the Rajneesh ...

Image: Oregon Historical Society##Lola Greene Baldwin in her office at the Portland YWCA, sometime in the 1890s.

Offbeat Oregon: Pioneering woman cop was Portland’s ‘municipal mother’

By the time Walt Disney Productions released “The Rescuers” in 1977, the idea of a “Rescue Aid Society” dedicated to the eradication of kidnapping felt quaint, old-fashioned and ...

##This postcard image from the 1920s shows the entrance to the Oregon State Penitentiary as it appeared during the 1925 breakout.

Offbeat Oregon: Bloody 1925 prison break ended badly for everyone

It was a typical balmy August evening at the Oregon State Penitentiary. The bell had rung for supper, so inmates were streaming out of their cells and heading toward the dining hall for the evening meal, ...

Image: Oregonian##William Rector and Charles Montgomery as they appeared in court during their trial.

Offbeat Oregon: Body-snatchers planned to hold ex-mayor’s corpse for ransom

The 19th century was a kind of golden age of body snatching. Digging up the freshly dead to cash the corpses in at the back door of a nearby medical school was — well, not common exactly, but far ...

Image: Oregon Historical Quarterly##The McLoughlin House near the bottom of Singer Hill in 1909, during the moving process.

Offbeat Oregon: The McLoughlin House’s unlikely journey to local historical treasure

To the average Oregon City resident, there wasn’t much to celebrate in the vacant, dilapidated old house by the foot of Willamette Falls. The house had, until a few years before, been known as the ...

Image: Polk County Historical Society##The Polk County Courthouse as it appeared in 1859. It was one of the second-story windows on this building that Enoch Smith leaped out of in a desperate attempt to escape from custody and avoid a death sentence.

Offbeat Oregon: After frontier murder, suspect was auctioned off as a temporary slave

In the first month of 1852, everyone in the frontier community of Cynthian was talking about the big crime wave. Well, it was big by frontier Oregon standards. Although it was (and still is) the seat ...

Image: James Russell/Naval History & Heritage Command##USS Alazon Bay, renamed Casablanca just two days prior to launching, at right, about to be launched at Henry J. Kaiser’s shipyard, Vancouver, Washington, on April 5, 1943. Two other escort carriers — probably the Luscome Bay and the Anzio, or possibly the Corregidor — are still under construction at left.

Offbeat Oregon: Vanport residents built nearly half of US WWII aircraft carriers

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 ...

Image: Wolfram Burner##The Neskowin “Ghost Forest,” a series of stumps rising out of the beach sand and surf. The Ghost Forest was submerged when the land under it slumped in the last Cascadia Subduction Zone megathrust quake, in 1700.

Offbeat Oregon: 'Like the ocean had become vertical'

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 ...

Offbeat Oregon: Treasure of lucky ‘beach gold’ prospectors may still be out there

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 ...

Offbeat Oregon: Oregon’s largest uranium mine was discovered by amateur rockhound

During the go-go years of the uranium-mining rush of the early 1950s, the character of the uranium prospector became iconic. He was basically the gold-seeking “miner 49er” updated for the atomic ...

Image: Postcard ## This postcard image, from a note mailed in 1909, shows the tiny Cloud Cap Inn on Mount Hood, with the peak behind. Built in 1889, the Cloud Cap was the only hotel onthe mountain until Timberline was built, and after guests started arriving in cars rather than on horses, it proved woefully inadequate to serve the demand for lodgings there.

Offbeat Oregon: Iconic Timberline Lodge could have been a gaudy skyscraper

High up on the side of Mount Hood, Timberline Lodge has over the years become an Oregon icon. Its rustic, WPA-financed design and construction strike most visitors as a good fit for the state’s general ...

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