Offbeat Oregon: The ‘circuit rider’ chronicles
In the early years of Oregon Country, back before it was a state — even before Idaho and Washington were separate territories — newly arrived settlers found themselves completely on their own. ...
Offbeat Oregon: John Reed: journalist, revolutionary
The list of national VIPs who have been native sons and daughters of Oregon is a short one, even considering how brief the state’s history is. Herbert Hoover and Ulysses S. Grant may be the closest; ...
Offbeat Oregon: Would inventor's steam-powered airship have worked?
Ironically enough, it was on the first day of winter — the winter after the 1929 stock-market crash that kicked off the Great Depression — that Oregon inventor Thomas B. Slate’s dream ...
Benton County lad became the 'Nikola Tesla of Oregon'
Almost everyone has seen the gripping footage of the great zeppelin Hindenburg falling flaming out of the gray skies of New Jersey in 1937, crushing as it fell the dreams of everyone who had hoped to see ...
Offbeat Oregon: Buying bomber was a gas for station owner
It was the summer of 1947, and Art Lacey was in serious trouble. He was about 50 feet above an Oklahoma airfield, at the controls of the biggest airplane he’d ever flown — a four-engined B-17G ...
Offbeat Oregon: Bizarre dinosaur 'bone wars' waged by rival paleontologists
Throughout the 20-year personal vendetta known jocosely today as “The Bone Wars,” Oregon was never more than a minor theater of operations. For the most part, the two cowboy-paleontologists ...
Offbeat Oregon: Jitney Wars pitted entrepreneurs against monopoly
The working stiffs, lunch pails in hand, shiver in the chill of an early January morning. The streetcar is late, again; and when it arrives, they’ll pack aboard to be taken slowly and uncomfortably ...
Offbeat Oregon: Gov. Martin's goons were dirty, incompetent fighters
Gwendolyn Ramsey can’t have been too happy to see Stanley Doyle when he called on her in August of 1937. Doyle had been the key figure behind framing her husband, Ernest Ramsey, and two of his fellow ...
Offbeat Oregon: Gov. Charles Martin tried to run Oregon like an Army base
It was the morning of Oct. 1, 1938, at the ceremonial dedication of the new Oregon state capitol building. Following several dedicatory speeches (including one by President Franklin D. Roosevelt), the ...
Offbeat Oregon: Oregon’s own would-be fascist dictator: Gov. Charles Martin
Remember Gen. Jack D. Ripper, the character from the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”? Can you imagine what might have happened if Gen. Ripper ...
Offbeat Oregon: Daring rescue saved 49, made skipper toast of the West Coast
By the time Capt. Charles T. “Buck” Bailey of the tugboat Tatoosh arrived, the steam schooner Washington had been drifting helplessly toward Peacock Spit for 20 brutal, soggy, pounding, terrifying ...
Offbeat Oregon: 'History hoarder's' massive collection becomes priceless state treasure
If you were to start asking local historians who the most influential Oregon historians of the 19th century were, there would be several names you would hear over and over. You’d hear Frances Fuller ...
Offbeat Oregon: Two heroes of two very different Civil Wars
On July 28, 1915, one of the heroes of the American Civil War was laid to rest in a grave in Crystal Lake Cemetery in Corvallis. The life story of U.S. Army Gen. Thomas Thorp had been a remarkable one. ...
Offbeat Oregon: Monmouth's 150-year tradition of prohibition
On May 18, 2010, a select group of Oregonians became the last voters in the history of the western United States to vote on a repeal of Prohibition. This wasn’t marijuana prohibition — it ...
Offbeat Oregon: Unwritten Law not always a disastrous moral failure
By 1908, most Oregonians’ views on the Unwritten Law were hardening into suspicious disapproval. Just one year earlier, citizens had burst into spontaneous applause in the courtroom when Orlando ...
