Table of contents: 2008-2009 articles

These are the columns published in the first two calendar years of Offbeat Oregon History. Please note, though — all the articles linked to on this page have been revisited with greater thoroughness and accuracy in 2016 and 2017. This page is essentially an archive of obsolete stories.

<< Oldest | < Older | | — This page: 2008-2009 stories — | | Newer: 2010 stories > | Newest >>


No.	Date pub.	Headline	Thumbnail	Area
		2009 articles:
54	12/27/09	Yaquina ghost story is pure fiction ... or is it? Joaquin Miller's sister-in-law published it in a fiction magazine in 1899, and it's become the best-known Oregon Coast ghost story. But there are those who wonder if it's really untrue.
53	12/21/09	Grande Ronde Valley: Eden, used-oxen dealership Native Americans bought exhausted oxen from one year's Oregon Trail emigrants, and -- after they'd fattened up nicely on the lush valley grasslands -- sold them for double price to the next year's travelers.
52	12/06/09	Pixieland: Memories of an edgy amusement park Built in the late 1960s as a "fairy-tale history of Oregon," the amusement park lasted just a few years before slipping into receivership. Today, all that's left is a dilapidated guardshack.
51	12/12/09	Lightship had to go cross-country to reach sea To get the beached ship back to the ocean, it had to be hauled due east -- away from the sea -- and launched in the calmer Columbia River.
50	11/15/09	BLM and Straub stopped plan for highway on beach Plan would have put highway, raised on pilings and surrounded by trucked-in sand, right along the beach on Nestucca Spit on land the federal government had given the state for use as a park only.
49	11/08/09	Oregon had inside track on California gold rush Oregonians found out about the discovery of gold a month before New Yorkers did; the state nearly emptied out as everyone who could went south.
48	11/05/09	Martial law declared in bawdy mining town Saloon keepers had taken over Copperfield; in response, governor Oswald West sent his secretary, Fern Hall, to close the wild and rowdy place down -- which she did.
47	10/29/09	Have you heard of Marie Dorion? Sacagawea got much more press, but Marie Dorion's story is more dramatic and, arguably, more influential
46	10/21/09	Early naturalist thwarted by hungry, thirsty fellow travelers One gobbled down his owl specimen; another poured the whisky out of his dead lizard specimen jar and drank it, leaving the lizards to rot.
45	10/06/09	Nation's only wheelchair-accessible tidepools Gravel company had planned to quarry all of Yaquina Head, leaving only a small island with the lighthouse on it at the end; when government bought the land, it turned the quarry into tidepools.
44	10/01/09	Pioneer governor was made of tough stuff A 60-mile bike ride, a half-acre of grass mowed with a reel-type push mower and an oak tree chopped through twice were all in a couple days' work for Governor T.T. Geer.
43	9/30/09	Corvallis' cattle-powered riverboat experiment Name of inventor who tried the treadmill-powered vessel lost in the mists of time, but he may be father of town's passion for alternative transportation.
42	9/23/09	Ice skating on Cottage Grove Lake? Historic cold snap let many Willamette Valley residents try out the sport for the first and, for many, only time.
41	9/19/09	Bonus Army of 1932 started in Portland The most damaging incident of the Hoover presidency started in Portland when Walter Waters started a peaceful march to Washington, D.C., to petition the president to let veterans draw on their service bonuses.
40	9/16/09	When Portland floods, folks raise the sidewalks In massive 1894 flood, Portlanders held boat races on downtown streets, caught steelhead in the train station lobby.
39	9/06/09	Mount Hood celebrated statehood with fireworks Northwest Oregon's mountain playground hasn't always been such a benign place; when the members of the Mazama Club held their meetings on top of Mount Hood, they were picnicking on an active volcano.
38	9/03/09	AWS spotted few enemies, but saved many friends The "eyes on the sky" on the West Coast during World War II watched for Japanese planes, but mostly they helped guide American planes in distress to safe landings.
37	8/24/09	Graveyard of Oregon Trail still said to be haunted Laurel Hill (Rhododendron Village) was the most dangerous part of the Barlow Road, the overland route for Oregon Trail emigrants; casualties were many, and ghost stories are as well.
36	8/23/09	Ghost stories still haunt century-old tavern White Eagle Saloon, est. 1906, has changed little since the days when Portland was a rough, dangerous waterfront town; it's picked up some ghostly legends over the years.
35	8/02/09	Hank Vaughn's most profitable "gunfight" While the gunsmoke and horsefeathers were flying behind the auction house, legendary cowboy's lawyer was buying back his wife's farm for a song.
34	8/17/09	Portland man woke up during his wake Two boys, asked to watch over the deceased on a dark and windy night in the 1890s, are terrified when the "corpse" starts making noises.
33	7/27/09	Man paddled over Silver Falls and survived. "Daredevil Al" Faussett ended up in the hospital after the plunge; while he was recovering, his partner skipped town with the proceeds from his feat
32	7/22/09	Lighthouse built 3 weeks too late for 16 sailors Construction crew struggled to light a warning bonfire after hearing a sailing ship about to hit the rocks below; the next morning, all they could see was the top of its mainmast sticking out of the water.
31	7/10/09	Unexploded WWII bomb rides in glovebox Civilian volunteers retrieved debris from the Japanese submarine-launched seaplane bombing of the forest near Brookings; included in the lot was an intact, unexploded bomb. Only later did they realize how lucky they were that it really was a dud.
30	7/08/09	Ashland Shakespeare plays beat out boxing event The festival's 1935 debut went head to head with a festival of fistfights, and to the astonishment of many city leaders, the Shakespeare plays kayoed the boxing in the first round
29	6/08/09	Did Sir Frances Drake summer in Whale Cove? Some historians think famous explorer's "Nova Albion," in which the Golden Hind stopped for repairs and provisions in 1579, is in Oregon, not northern California.
28	5/31/09	Mule-powered railroad a desperate gambit Colonel T.E. Hogg built tiny track over Cascades, hauled in a boxcar so he could say he had service over the mountains. Why? After his steamer was wrecked in a suspicious accident, he was desperate for cash.
27	5/24/09	The swine flu: Is it deja vu? The "Spanish Flu" in 1918-1919 also was likely related to pigs; it killed 3,675 Oregon residents, but much has changed since then.
26	5/21/09	Oregon helped Hoover prevent mass starvation Few people know it, but the most hated president of the 20th Century saved more people from starving to death than anyone else in the history of the world -- ever.
25	5/10/09	Oregon freeways were the envy of the west State had first paved road border-to-border west of the Mississippi, in 1923; its first freeway, the Banfield, came a year before Eisenhower's freeway legislation
24	5/05/09	Granite: An old mining town that's almost a ghost Not long ago, the former gold-mining Blue Mountain boomtown was an incorporated city of one; it's grown 2,800 percent since.
23	5/03/09	The president from Oregon who fed millions A local Willamette Valley teen-ager named Bert Hoover, an orphan sent from Iowa to live with his uncle, went on to save millions of lives and become a singularly ill-starred U.S. president.
22	5/03/09	Snubbed by railroad, Prineville built its own Most Oregon towns, when bypassed by the railroad, withered into tiny hamlets -- but one of them refused to die, and built its own railroad instead.
21	4/26/09	Farmer from Oregon started California's gold rush Driven from Oregon's Willamette Valley by the spring rain, James Marshall likely would have been happier if he'd stayed; he made the initial discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, but didn't benefit much from it.
20	4/19/09	No one has ever found legendary lost gold mine A group of kids from a lost wagon train found some strange yellow rocks in 1845, three years before the Gold Rush hit. Miners have been looking for the kids' play spot ever since.
19	4/12/09	This was the lake that wasn't, but then was A dry year caused a massive Eastern Oregon lake to dry up; the next year, pioneers stared bewildered at earlier tracks, which led straight into the lake
18	4/06/09	13 was unlucky number in Oregon train robbery D'Autremont brothers destroyed mail car, killed several people in bungled attempt at a heist in 1923, in American history's last Old West-style train robbery (NOTE: It is the sheerest coincidence that this article came as No. 13 on my list; they're numbered by date published, not date written. If you'll read this story, you'll understand how truly spooky that is).
17	5/02/09	Liberty ships: Building 'em faster than Hitler could sink 'em, in Oregon At Henry Kaiser's Portland shipyard, a champagne bottle was getting cracked over a brand-new bow every three days throughout the war.
16	3/22/09	Oregon Electric railroad line: State's past -- and future? The plush rail service left artifacts along its lines after being made obsolete by the popularity of automobiles. But with the rising costs of fuel, it could be an idea whose time has come back.
15	3/22/09	Love Crater Lake? Thank an Albany newspaperman Founder of the Albany Herald fought for nearly 20 years to get iconic lake set aside as a public park; along the way, he introduced trout into it, and the state has been struggling to get them out ever since.
14	3/18/09	Coming soon to a beach near you: 350-year-old beeswax Chunks of beeswax that still occasionally wash up on Oregon beaches have been carbon-dated to the early 1600s, and are believed to be from a wrecked Spanish galleon.
13	3/07/09	Valsetz: Company town was soggy, but home The tiny town was owned by the sawmill, which bulldozed and burned it in 1984 when the mill closed.
12	2/25/09	The Oregon town that fell into the sea Bayocean residents paid to build a jetty that changed the ocean's currents and caused it to wash the town away.
11	2/19/09	A pioneer scientist's graffiti in a cave Prof. Thomas Condon and his students signed a stalagmite in Oregon Caves in 1883; their autographs are now protected by a thin layer of translucent calcite and will remain legible for millennia.
10	2/11/09	Oregon's Centennial: The $19 million party The Centennial bash in 1959 was a huge event; the state had been gearing up for three years and allocated millions to the festivities.
9	2/01/09	Oregon art students got "punk'd" by Andy Warhol & Co. One of Warhol's cronies powdered his hair, donned Ray-Bans and impersonated his pal on the lecture circuit at universities in Oregon, Utah and Montana; hilarity ensued — for some, at least.
8	2/05/09	John Day's pioneer Chinese herbalist Settlers in the late 1800s learned the healer of Kam Wah Chung could cure diseases others couldn't; all his patients survived the fatal Spanish Flu epidemic in 1919
		2008 articles:
7	12/28/08	Jacksonville: Where gold was as cheap as salt Hundreds of miles from nearest farm, but just a few yards from nearest mine, Southern Oregon town had so much gold the local bank charged a storage fee instead of paying interest.
6	12/7/08	The scandalous secret of One-Eyed Charley There was something nobody kenw about the most skillful, admired stagecoach driver in 1880s Oregon -- but the horses knew the truth.
5	11/23/08	14,000-year-old fossilized people poop The discovery pushed back the date of the earliest known humans in what's now Oregon until before the end of the last ice age; scientists actually recovered DNA from the samples.
4	11/16/08	Fish wheels back in service -- to save fish? Once blamed for wiping out the enormous Columbia River salmon run, the mechanical salmon harvesters bring fish unhurt into waiting hands of conservationists who count, tag and release them
3	11/9/08	Did Bonneville Dam win World War II? Power from Bonneville Dam in 1930s was turned into warplanes and other aluminum war materiel in the 1940s; it also made the development of nuclear weapons and energy possible.
2	10/26/08	Did Japan's wartime balloon bombs start the 1945 Tillamook Burn? Forest fire broke out in a remote spot at odd time of year, in a virtually inaccessible spot, during World War II; no cause has yet been found.
1	10/19/08	Florence's famous exploding whale An inexperienced highway engineer guessed wrong about how much dynamite would be needed to rid the beach of 8 tons of rotting whale carcass, with expensive and stinky results.

Table of contents: 2008-2009 articles

<< Oldest | < Older | | — This page: 2008-2009 stories — | | Newer: 2010 stories > | Newest >>

No.

Date pub.

Headline

Thumbnail

Area

2009 articles:

54

12/27/09

Joaquin Miller's sister-in-law published it in a fiction magazine in 1899, and it's become the best-known Oregon Coast ghost story. But there are those who wonder if it's really untrue.

53

12/21/09

Native Americans bought exhausted oxen from one year's Oregon Trail emigrants, and -- after they'd fattened up nicely on the lush valley grasslands -- sold them for double price to the next year's travelers.

52

12/06/09

Built in the late 1960s as a "fairy-tale history of Oregon," the amusement park lasted just a few years before slipping into receivership. Today, all that's left is a dilapidated guardshack.

51

12/12/09

To get the beached ship back to the ocean, it had to be hauled due east -- away from the sea -- and launched in the calmer Columbia River.

50

11/15/09

Plan would have put highway, raised on pilings and surrounded by trucked-in sand, right along the beach on Nestucca Spit on land the federal government had given the state for use as a park only.

49

11/08/09

Oregonians found out about the discovery of gold a month before New Yorkers did; the state nearly emptied out as everyone who could went south.

48

11/05/09

Saloon keepers had taken over Copperfield; in response, governor Oswald West sent his secretary, Fern Hall, to close the wild and rowdy place down -- which she did.

47

10/29/09

Sacagawea got much more press, but Marie Dorion's story is more dramatic and, arguably, more influential

46

10/21/09

One gobbled down his owl specimen; another poured the whisky out of his dead lizard specimen jar and drank it, leaving the lizards to rot.

45

10/06/09

Gravel company had planned to quarry all of Yaquina Head, leaving only a small island with the lighthouse on it at the end; when government bought the land, it turned the quarry into tidepools.

44

10/01/09

A 60-mile bike ride, a half-acre of grass mowed with a reel-type push mower and an oak tree chopped through twice were all in a couple days' work for Governor T.T. Geer.

43

9/30/09

Name of inventor who tried the treadmill-powered vessel lost in the mists of time, but he may be father of town's passion for alternative transportation.

42

9/23/09

Historic cold snap let many Willamette Valley residents try out the sport for the first and, for many, only time.

41

9/19/09

The most damaging incident of the Hoover presidency started in Portland when Walter Waters started a peaceful march to Washington, D.C., to petition the president to let veterans draw on their service bonuses.

40

9/16/09

In massive 1894 flood, Portlanders held boat races on downtown streets, caught steelhead in the train station lobby.

39

9/06/09

Northwest Oregon's mountain playground hasn't always been such a benign place; when the members of the Mazama Club held their meetings on top of Mount Hood, they were picnicking on an active volcano.

38

9/03/09

The "eyes on the sky" on the West Coast during World War II watched for Japanese planes, but mostly they helped guide American planes in distress to safe landings.

37

8/24/09

Laurel Hill (Rhododendron Village) was the most dangerous part of the Barlow Road, the overland route for Oregon Trail emigrants; casualties were many, and ghost stories are as well.

36

8/23/09

White Eagle Saloon, est. 1906, has changed little since the days when Portland was a rough, dangerous waterfront town; it's picked up some ghostly legends over the years.

35

8/02/09

While the gunsmoke and horsefeathers were flying behind the auction house, legendary cowboy's lawyer was buying back his wife's farm for a song.

34

8/17/09

Two boys, asked to watch over the deceased on a dark and windy night in the 1890s, are terrified when the "corpse" starts making noises.

33

7/27/09

"Daredevil Al" Faussett ended up in the hospital after the plunge; while he was recovering, his partner skipped town with the proceeds from his feat

32

7/22/09

Construction crew struggled to light a warning bonfire after hearing a sailing ship about to hit the rocks below; the next morning, all they could see was the top of its mainmast sticking out of the water.

31

7/10/09

Civilian volunteers retrieved debris from the Japanese submarine-launched seaplane bombing of the forest near Brookings; included in the lot was an intact, unexploded bomb. Only later did they realize how lucky they were that it really was a dud.