The Evergreen

The cowboy is one of the most potent symbols of American Western mythology. But while pop culture might call John Wayne or the Marlboro Man to mind, real history tells a different story than Hollywood or history books. Cowboys in the West were racially diverse, and in Eastern Oregon, Chinese Americans played a big role in ranching and local economies.   As part of work to reclaim histories of...

On Jan. 2, 2016 a dozen armed men took over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. Today, we bring you a documentary OPB reporters made in the immediate aftermath of the 41-day occupation. And OPB reporter Conrad Wilson gives us an  update from Harney County  10 years later. If you’re curious to learn more about the people who took over the wild...

Quiet can be an elusive thing, especially in an urban environment. Going out into nature is a good way to escape the sounds of the city, but trails are often full of people talking, dogs barking and you can still hear road noise from a lot of parks and hiking spots. Some people even feel the need to bring a Bluetooth speaker along with them when they’re out in nature. So how can you find a p...

What’s the philosophy behind enjoying a good roller coaster ride? What should travelers keep in mind as they’re waved through a construction site on the road? What’s it like to care for cattle at 4,200 feet elevation (and what’s the mooood on the range)? 🐮   As usual, we’ve got lots of questions about the different jobs Pacific Northwesterners do every day. So t...

The iconic artist Rick Bartow, a small-town Oregon kid, went on to see his work featured in over 100 museums across the country, including an installation in the White House garden.    His work mirrored real life. It was raw, aggressive, dark and emotional. The beautiful and weird in his work came from, sometimes, a painful story.    He was drafted during the Vietnam War and ca...

What happens when boats are abandoned in the water and start falling apart? Whether it’s a big barge or a small sailboat, abandoned and derelict vessels, or ADVs, have to be dealt with. If an ADV sits too long, it could end up blocking a navigation channel or becoming an environmental hazard, especially if it sinks.  It can be really challenging to figure out how to pay for the removal...

This is the English version of this podcast episode. Haga clic aquí para escuchar en español. Luis Lamas left Oregon out of fear.    “I don't want to find out if they're going to put me in a detention center or if I'm going to live so many more years [here] and be told, you know what, no, you have to go back to your country,” he said in Spanish.    Lam...

Esta es la versión en español de este episodio del podcast. Click here to listen in English.   Luis Lamas salió de Oregon por miedo.   “No quiero averiguar si me van a meter a un centro de detención o si voy a vivir tantos años más y que me digan sabes que, siempre no, te tienes que ir a tu país.” dijo.   Lamas se encuentr...

By now, you’re probably used to hearing the long list of letters and cities that make up our station IDs. But how does all that actually work? How does OPB radio reach your ears in Bend, Burns and Baker City? Well, it’s thanks to OPB’s team of broadcast engineers, who maintain radio transmitters across the state. And it is not easy to do. Imagine driving to the top of a mountain...

In 2023 and 2024, four out of six dams on the Klamath River were taken out, in the l argest dam removal project in US history. Tribes in the Klamath Basin had been fighting for dam removal for more than a century. This summer, a group of Indigenous youth from multiple tribes made the first descent of the river from its headwaters in Southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California since...

Mark Rothko is known for his colorful abstract paintings of stacked rectangles with billowy borders and layered textures. His art has been auctioned for up to $186 million, but he once turned down a commission at a fancy restaurant because he felt his work wouldn’t be appreciated by the wealthy patrons there. He was raised in Portland and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1921. His first...

Every American city — including Portland — is divided by crumbling old highways, and every city is trying to figure out what to do with them. " The Big Dig " podcast from Boston came to town for a conversation with OPB’s Lillian Karabaic, whose “Stop Requested ” project looked into public transit across Oregon, about Portland’s own attempts to solve that puzzle...

From 1819 through the 1970s, the U.S. government removed Native American children from their homes. Tens of thousands of kids, preschoolers to teenagers, from tribes across the country, grew up in boarding schools, including several in the Pacific Northwest . The institutions were part of a colonialist project of forced assimilation to white culture, where expressions of Indigeneity were forbidden...

Who was the badass woman who became the namesake for Portland’s only lesbian bar? Dr. Marie Equi was born in 1872 and came to Oregon at the age of 20. She became known as a radical and lived an extraordinary life. She was a fierce advocate for women’s rights and reproductive freedom as well as an activist for workers’ rights. She staged a one-woman anti-war protest during World W...

Love it or hate it, Artificial Intelligence is here and poised to change just about everything about the way we learn, remember, and think. Last year, Oregon became the first state to release guidance on integrating AI in schools. This week, we go inside Oregon classrooms to see how students and teachers are using the technology—for better and worse. How do students resist the urge to cheat...

In March 2019, in the wooded hills above the rural river town of Rainier, Oregon, 18-year-old Sarah Zuber was found dead 400 feet from her front door. Six years later, her family still has no clue what happened to their daughter. Don’t forget to check out our many podcasts, which can be found on any of your favorite podcast apps: Hush Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars Politics Now Think Out...

At Fiesta Mexicana in Woodburn, joint Mexican and American flags fly in the air. Colorfully dressed Aztec dancers take the stage. And elote is everywhere.    It’s a celebration, but this year it’s become something more: an act of resistance.    “We have to continue to do this despite everything, despite the harm, despite the oppression, despite the discriminat...

In October 1923, three brothers held up a train headed south from Ashland. Instead of making off with the loot, however, they killed four people and led police on a worldwide manhunt. Newspapers called it “the crime of the century.” It came to be known as “The Last Great American Train Robbery.” But it was actually a total failure. So why do people still talk and write song...

On September 5th, 2023, Jesse Johnson  walked out of jail a free man . He’d spent a quarter century incarcerated, including 17 years on death row, for a crime he always insisted he didn’t commit: the 1998 murder of Harriet Thompson in Salem, Oregon. Two years after his release,  Johnson is suing  the state of Oregon and the Salem police detectives who locked him up for m...

Portland may not be known as a hub of hip-hop on par with New York or Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a hotbed for sonic experimentation and incredible talent for decades.    We had all the elements: historic Black neighborhoods in Northeast Portland, jazz dripping out of clubs, funk bands, block parties, dances, and plenty of good ol’ fashioned youthf...

In the U.S., there are about 100,000 monkeys, baboons, and other primates living in captivity to support scientific research. About 5,000 of them are at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center . That’s where researchers do experiments on monkeys to try to get clear data about things like cannabis use during pregnancy, and to find cures for diseases like HIV. Animal rights activi...

Meet Irene Gilbert, a 76-year-old retired state employee, former gun store owner and avid elk hunter from La Grande, Oregon. She’s a citizen activist, who considers herself an environmentalist, and is on a mission to keep wind turbines and transmission towers from blighting the rural landscape.    She’s using regulations originally set up to address concerns about nuclear pow...

Five years ago, for some Oregon residents, the world burned down. A severe windstorm and dry conditions saw out-of-control fires explode around the state on September 7th and 8th in 2020. They raged through communities like Gates, Detroit and Otis in Northwest Oregon, and Talent and Phoenix in Southern Oregon. What became known as the Labor Day Fires burned more than four thousand homes and more t...

On the morning of May 15, 2025, officers from multiple local, state and federal agencies raided the West Coast Game Park Safari and seized more than 300 animals. The park had a wide variety of animals, including lions and other big cats, capybaras, camels and a chimpanzee. They also had chickens, sheep, llamas and goats. People had been complaining about dangerous conditions at the park for years...

It’s the summer. The days are longer, and the nights are hotter.    It’s the perfect time to talk about romance, specifically romance novels. They’ve become so popular in recent years, with over 39 million copies sold in 2023, according to The New York Times .     That doesn’t exclude the Pacific Northwest. Here, we’ve also seen a rise in roma...