Offbeat Oregon: ‘King of moonshiners’ was an old-time music legend
Among musicians and fans of old-time string-band music, Benjamin Franklin Jarrell is basically royalty. As a member of one of the most influential bands from the golden age of old-time music — DaCosta ...
Offbeat Oregon: Second-largest city, Camp Adair, built in six months
By early 1941, the U.S. Army knew it was about to get sucked into at least one of the wars that were already raging around the world. The Selective Service and Training Act had passed the previous fall, ...
Offbeat Oregon: Part III: The advocate of forced sterilization
The years just after the discovery of germ theory were a great time to be a mainstream physician. By understanding, for the first time, the true vectors of disease, doctors suddenly found they were able to make real and undeniable changes in patient outcomes.
Offbeat Oregon: Pioneer woman doctor was Oregon’s ‘Modern Prometheus’
In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” Shelley tells the story of a brilliant and gifted scientist-physician who reaches too far in ...
Offbeat Oregon: Colorful sea-captain was a 19th-century Han Solo
There was no reason why the U.S. Marshal should spend the night on board the cramped, smelly little freight schooner he was in charge of. After all, the ship was anchored in a semi-civilized town — ...
Offbeat Oregon: Oregon Territory journalism began with a flamboyant Flumgudgeon
In west’s first newspaper, every copy was written out longhand It’s widely known that the first newspaper west of the Mississippi River was the short-lived Oregon Spectator, which published ...
Offbeat Oregon: 1890s governor to U.S. president: Mind your own damn business
If there were a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for the state with the crankiest former governor, Oregon would surely hold the title. The state would have earned the record in 1886, when ...
Offbeat Oregon: Former town marshal protested his firing by murdering the new marshal
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 ...
Offbeat Oregon: Epic wagon-road swindle made headlines nationwide
A few years after Oregon became a state, some of its leaders participated in what might actually have been the biggest non-Indian-related land-grab swindle in U.S. history. That’s putting it a bit ...
Offbeat Oregon: Lewis and Clark blazed trail with heavy-metal laxatives
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 ...
Offbeat Oregon: Jackrabbit-massacre parties were all the rage a century ago
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re passing through a little Harney County town when you see, in a used-car lot, a DMC DeLorean that someone has modified as a replica of the car from “Back to ...
Offbeat Oregon: Deadly Long Creek tornado was worst in state’s history
Around New Year’s, many writers make a regular practice of looking back upon the past year and writing about it. I suspect this practice got started with Penny Press-era newshounds who found it very ...
Offbeat Oregon: Frederic Balch’s dreamy mythology came to define wilderness Oregon
Here is a pop quiz for Oregon history enthusiasts, and yes, it’s a trick question. But, humor me: What comes to your mind when I mention the name “Balch”? For most of us, it’s ...
Offbeat Oregon: World’s shortest river is still long on drama – and hilarity
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 ...
