Offbeat Oregon History podcast

Frances Fuller Victor became the founding mother of all Oregon history, and one of its most important writers of all time. By the time she arrived in the Beaver State, she was already a well-known writer. (St. Helens, Columbia County; 1860s, 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1503e.frances-fuller-victor-part1.332.html)

In May of 1895, on the old San Francisco waterfront, four sailors signed onto the four-masted barkentine Arago for a voyage to Valparaiso, Chile (“and thence to such other foreign ports as the master might direct, and thence to return to the United States”) via Astoria. By the time they got to Astoria, the four of them had had enough of conditions on the Arago. They stepped off the ship and essent...

He might have accomplished it, too, but he lost friends when he tried to claim water rights to Bull Run, and when his primary investors went bankrupt in a bank panic, he was forced to give up the scheme and leave town. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1502d.lafe-pence-guild-lake-scheme.327.html)

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. But understanding those vectors — microbes — did something else too.... (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see...

It was a remarkable start to an even more remarkable career — the more so as Bethenia was over 30 years old when she launched it. It was also not a “second act” career, but a fourth — she’d been a wife, then a teacher, then a hat-shop entrepreneur, and now a physician. She had seen much of the world, and conquered more than most. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, s...

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 his quest for knowledge, and dares to lay his hands on the power that rightly belongs only to the gods: that of the creation of life. Oregon history has its own Modern Prometheus. She didn’t create and animate a monster...

Yesterday, in Part One of this story, we had just gotten to the part where the Tonquin had been blown up, marooning the Astorians on the far side of the continent. But the damage done by the Tonquin and its captain, Jonathan Thorn, went far beyond the loss of the ship. Thorn’s bargaining style had not only cost the expedition its ship and stranded Fort Astoria in the wilderness, it had sent a real...

For most people today, the story of the original colony of Astoria is remembered — if it’s remembered at all — as a dismal failure. It was an ill-equipped party sent out by a rich guy in New York, which failed and was forced to sell out at fire-sale prices to the British. And yeah, that’s all kind of true … but the most interesting thing about Fort Astoria is, if John Jacob Astor’s explorers had s...

Everyone thought John Hawk was stealing cattle, and he refused to talk about it. So one night, a group of cattlemen snuck into his camp and assassinated him — and were shocked by the frontier community's response. (Joseph, Wallowa County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1310d-john-hawk-murder-by-vigilantes.html)

The job got off to a bad start when the fireman escaped and sprinted for the nearby town. The main suspect in the robbery quickly left town, and a few months later was killed in a streetcar holdup in Washington. (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1502c.roseburg-train-robbery-jack-case.326.html)

The “Baritone Bandit” led a small group of desperados with a large cache of dynamite, and they got away with a good bit of loot from the Douglas County robbery. But one of the passengers saw behind the bandit's mask ... (Cow Creek Canyon, Douglas County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1502b.cow-creek-train-robbery.325.html)

Extortionists, jailbreakers, safecrackers, jealous lovers and even truant students have, throughout the early years of Oregon history, found high explosives a powerful aid to their nefarious schemes. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1501d.crime-and-dynamite.html)

Award-winning criminal mastermind/ motivational speaker Blackie DuQuesne shares a few key insights for aspiring train robbers on how to avoid “n00b mistakes” on a railroad heist. (1890s, 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1501c.how-to-rob-trains-with-blackie-duquesne.html)

The sailor wanted to quit, but the captain didn't want him to; so he deposited a $60 'blood money' bonus with the British consul, as a reward if shanghaier Jim Turk could swindle him back aboard. Unfortunately, they killed him in the attempt. This kicked off a three-act courtroom drama oddly reminiscent of a Three Stooges episode. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see htt...

For workers in the 'bad old days' of working in the woods and in janky, underengineered sawmills, the occasional loss of a finger or two just came with the territory. (Garibaldi, Tillamook County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1904b.loggers-were-tough-guys-543.html)

Smithfield rebels' gesture of defiance on the main stagecoach route caused shock and outrage, but nobody was outraged enough to risk being shot over it; so the flag waved there until federal troops arrived and confiscated it. (Franklin, Lane County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1502a.rebel-flag-over-oregon.324.html)

The evidence against Charles Kimzey was circumstantial, but police had the goods on him for an attempted murder the year before, so he was sent up the river on a life stretch. But clearly two men had done the killing -- and no one ever really got a line on who his partner might have been. (Big Lava Lake, Deschutes County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1904d.trapper-m...

Ed Nickols hadn't wanted to spend the winter by himself at the remote cabin, because he'd made a dangerous enemy in a former coworker who turned out to be an escaped convict. So Roy Wilson and Dewey Morris spent the winter there with him ... and all three disappeared halfway through it. (Lava Lake, Deschutes County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1904c.trapper-murders...

Astoria shyster L.G. Carpenter coveted Darius Norris's valuable acreage on Long Beach Peninsula. So he got the police chief to arrest Norris on bogus charges, swindled him into signing over his property, and shanghaied him off out of town on a sailing ship. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1903b.darius-norris-shanghaied-538.html)

When World War I broke out, Herbert Hoover was the world's most successful mining engineer. He abandoned all that to build an organization to feed the starving, first in Belgium and then throughout war-torn Europe. (London, UK; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1702c.herbert-hoover-in-belgium-431.html)

He arrived in Oregon at age 9, and people called him “Poor Little Bertie.” He left Oregon for good to go to college at Stanford when he was 17. But Herbert Clark Hoover remained a member of the Salem Quaker church until his death. (Newburg, Yamhill County; 1880s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1702b.herbert-hoover-raised-in-oregon-430.html)

Laura Starcher and her friends were fed up with the halfhearted, desultory service they were getting from city government. So they got organized, ran for all the public offices, and won ... much to the chagrin of the defeated mayor: Starcher's husband. (Umatilla, Umatilla County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1903d.umatilla-petticoat-revolution-540.html)

Clarence the logger was running a trapline as a side hustle. One day, he decided a passing skunk would look great on his stretching rack, and impulsively seized the skunk with his bare hands. This did not turn out to be one of Clarence's better ideas. (Garibaldi, Tillamook County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1904a.tillamook-county-wildlife-encounters-542.html)

At Jake Silverman's trial, 11 jurors wanted him to hang, but couldn't convince the lone holdout to change his vote. So voters changed the law and made Oregon the only state in the country where you could be convicted on a 10-2 vote. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1993) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1809e.1812.silverman-verdict.html)

It had been an accident, but small-time Portland crook Jimmy Walker had shot Rose City crime boss “Shy Frank” Kodat. Unfortunately for Jimmy, he picked the wrong friend to run to for help. (Portland, Scappoose; Multnomah and Columbia County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1310c-jimmy-walker-gangland-murder.html)