Offbeat Oregon: $2.6 million party highlighted Oregon’s ‘age of innocence’
One of the real privileges of being a lifelong Oregonian of a certain, er, vintage, is the opportunity to have seen this state in its golden age — roughly, 1946 through 1980 — through a child’s ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
