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 ...
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 ...
Offbeat Oregon: Quest led to madness and death
By 1899, when Samuel L. Simpson’s drinking problem finally got around to killing him, he was essentially Oregon’s poet laureate — the Stewart Holbrook of the 1800s. Offbeat Oregon Finn ...
Offbeat Oregon: Wildest lost-cabin gold mine story may be true … or not
The “lost cabin gold mine” is a certifiable Western trope. If every ounce of legendary gold buried in an old log cabin became real and hit the banks at the same time, it would probably crash ...
Offbeat Oregon: ‘Colonel’ Hogg’s war record? Robbery on the high seas
Corvallis/Toledo railroad tycoon T. Edgenton Hogg (pronounced “Hoag”) was always somewhat reticent about his past. Especially the Civil War part. To some extent, that was understandable. “Colonel” ...
Offbeat Oregon: Famous prospector’s death sparked ‘lost mine’ legends
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 ...
Offbeat Oregon: ‘Colossal Claude,’ the great Columbia Bar Sea Serpent
Ask anyone to name a mythical Oregon creature, and you’ll get a very predictable answer: Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch. Offbeat Oregon Finn J.D. John, an instructor at OSU, writes ...
Offbeat Oregon: The ‘own-goal’ champ of state history
This is a continuation of the Offbeat Oregon column that appeared in last week’s Connections. A.C. Edmunds’ experience in Portland before the Civil War had been so short, and by his personal ...
Offbeat Oregon: With a friend like A.C. Edmunds, suffragists needed no enemies
One of the most dramatic things that can happen in a soccer game is an “own-goal.” Not the kind where a player on offense bounces a shot off a defender and into the net, but the full-on ...
Offbeat Oregon: Sternwheelers on the Willamette River sometimes towed barns, caught flying fish
The Willamette River was running high and wild on the morning of Feb. 5, 1890, as Alden and Arthur Graham set out from Oregon City in their sternwheel riverboat for the daily run to Portland. Offbeat ...
Offbeat Oregon: Astoria, San Francisco once powered nation’s marine-engine industry
Between 1908 and 1911, something happened that almost certainly saved hundreds of men from drowning on the Columbia River Bar. Offbeat Oregon Finn J.D. John, an instructor at OSU, writes ...
